


Never in a Billion Years

by Xuxunette



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: A chapter a week, Averted Sexual Assault, Bonding, Bottom Severus Snape, Canon Compliant, Crossdressing, Dirty Talk, Divorced!Harry, Fluff and Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Light Bondage, M/M, No Ginny trashing but transparent effort at writing Ginny/Harry out of existence, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Severus Snape Lives, Silly, Smut, Virgin Severus Snape, Work In Progress, bottom!Snape, mention of MPREG, virgin!Snape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:20:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29025618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xuxunette/pseuds/Xuxunette
Summary: Harry takes stock of his life after his divorce. Snape messes up his ‘I’m dead’ cover and is in a bit of a pickle that, of course, only sex with Potter can solve.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape
Comments: 65
Kudos: 138





	1. Grimmauld Place

**Author's Note:**

> Many many thanks to my wonderful beta Jay Dvinityinmotion and Mitzevahmelting. <3

  
  


_"What do you mean you’re a virgin and I need to have sex with you?"_

Harry Potter, forty, youngest Head of the MLE, proud father of two sons and a daughter.

Divorced as of today, 9 AM.

Upstairs, the last few boxes of his belongings were unpacking themselves into Sirius’ old room. The Ministry-sealed document autographed by H. J. Potter and G. M. Weasley was tucked away in his desk. A short statement asking for the respect of their privacy given their children had been sent to the Prophet. Not that the damage wasn’t already done.

With a scroll from work in hand, Harry sat on the parlor’s couch. He took a sip of the Lapsang Mokong tea Kreacher made for him. 

The ancient house-elf who had agreed to a retirement of sorts by accepting a pair of black socks, a five galleons-per-month pension, and a renovated room in the attic, still insisted on “helping around”. 

It mostly meant that he did exactly what he’d done all his life: be 12 Grimmauld Place’s house-elf. 

Harry didn’t mind. The battle-scarred creature had taken a liking to his children and was in as chirpy a mood as Harry ever saw him in. In fact, when he officially separated from Ginny last summer, and told the elf that the kids would each have their own permanent room at Grimmauld as part of shared custody, Kreacher had fainted with joy.

The house was as neat and gleaming as a newly minted sickle.

All in all, with the renovations, Harry liked the place now. And the kids, who had taken the new arrangements as well as he could have expected them to, liked it too. The walls in James’s room were already covered with red and gold banners and witches at beaches themed posters.

Harry stared at the case review in his hand without reading a line.

Ginny and he were on not exactly warm, but cordial terms. More sincerely cordial than they’ve been with each other for ages. Especially now that the whole thing was over at last. After signing the paperwork this morning, they had actually embraced in a brief, final hug. 

Yes, Harry was relieved that chapter of his life was over. 

And it was the right decision to sort it out now, when the youngest were both acclimated to Hogwarts and James was back to all right. And before any of them got really hurt. 

Though he’d never say it aloud, he sometimes thought Albus ended up in Slytherin because on some level his sensitive second son recognized he was the ‘desperately trying to make it work’ kid. 

Even bubbly Lily, the happy accident that shored his flailing marriage for a while — because there was no doubt Ginny was a loving and dedicated mother — had shown signs of malaise by a progressive quieting of her glib tongue. Harry could only assume it was due to the fact that when she too went off to the school, leaving only Ginny and he at the house, all the old cracks had resurfaced. In a way that made it harder than ever to maintain the happy couple facade. 

And then there were James’ less than spectacular NEWTs grades. Harry was quite sure the older boy overhearing — via one magically enhanced means or another — their late night, muffliato’d shouting matches was responsible for those. His eldest, brazen son was never studious, but a T in Arithmancy _and_ Transfiguration just didn’t do him justice. 

After that debacle, they had tried to convince him into various internship schemes. At the Ministry, at the Prophet, and with every relative they had. All of them sullenly denied until Bill visited for supper. Now Jamie was running around with dragons somewhere in Romania. Last sighted on Christmas Eve with a much improved attitude and a rather buff professional huntress lady-friend who wore thigh-high dragon skin boots. 

Their eldest’s NEWTs results had been the first obvious sign that what they were trying simply wasn’t working. And judging by Albus’ and Lilly’s reactions when they told them about the separation, it was clear the only people Ginny and he had been fooling were themselves. During the heavily rehearsed summer lunch (prefaced, interjected, and concluded with many a ‘You must know that it is not your fault’ and ‘We both love you very much’), Albus had given each of them a hug, and Lily had only smiled a sad little smile, before both of them quietly cleared the table.

Yes, it was the right decision. 

Still, he felt numb. All his life he had carried a sense of not living up to his fame, yet rose to the occasion to prove himself wrong. But tried-and-true bravery against dark lords had failed in the face of conjugal trifles. 

Having fallen from the track well and truly for the first time, he wasn’t sure what to do.

Harry bottomed up his tea, discarded the cup, and thumbed J.P. Armand’s arrest report back to the top.

Well, there were his kids, his friends, and his position at the Ministry.


	2. The Island

Severus Snape, fifty-nine, most reviled former Headmaster of Hogwarts and wizard of general dubious repute.

Deceased since May 2, 1998.

Severus adjusted his sunglasses and sipped his brightly colored juices mix. A tad heavy on ananas, but still refreshing. 

The sky stretched overhead in infinite swatches of languid blue. The sea murmured lazy nothings in rhythmic waves. The sand reverberated torpid heat into caressing breezes. 

Not a single sound originating from humans could be heard at this time of the day. Vacationers had not yet risen. Party goers were dead drunk and fermenting in their own vomit. All of it miles aways from his own little piece of paradise. 

Death became Severus Snape. It was, simply put, bliss.

Three high and clear melodious peals punctured the air. 

The rooster’s crowing reminded him that the chicken coop needed fixing. No large predator existed on this islet the size of a larger suburban plot, but there were snakes which preyed on eggs. He needed to secure the coop’s mesh screen and replace the palm thatch roofing.

A couple of sticking spells should do for the mesh, he’d get around to it this evening. The thatch would have to wait till tomorrow, when he went for supplies. He’d pick up fresh ones from the locals in Ca Nho: the fishers’ village that served as his main link to the rest of the world, ideally situated just outside of the resorts and clubs hub of Dai Bo-Chry, the new and coming Phuket wannabe of South Vietnam’s seas. 

Snape had discovered in the very earliest days of his death, when he still looked over his shoulder and avoided staying in one place for too long, that the locations best suited to a fugitive of the wizarding world were medium-sized towns designed to be strongholds for a thing the Muggles called ‘party tourism’. Wizards and magical beasts alike fled such places like the plague. 

Severus readily sympathized with the sentiment. Muggles that inclined to seek such locations were a truly repellent species, more heinous even than the average tourist. 

But their outlandish vulgarity — they were invariably moronic and loud — drew magical attention away from him. 

Their gregarious flocking habits — principally consisting of unruly dancing to tasteless tunes after sunset — was easily imitated if necessary.

And their mismatched appearance — when clothings was involved at all — permitted him anonymity without a single spell. 

Plus, when he had to mingle, nobody expected from him conversations with background stories, or indeed even the grasp of a common language. 

He had moved from Cancun, to Buenos Aires, to Rio de Janeiro, to Ibiza, back to Florida, onward to Bangkok, to Phnom Penh. And when, now ten years ago and travelling southward still, he laid eyes on the small inhabited island, he instantly knew he had found the best of both worlds.

Dai Bo-Chry was near enough that Snape was the only magical being in a sixty-mile radius, yet far enough that only the few and far in between cruise boats pested his sight, and only the most egregious beach revelries polluted his hearing. 

Apparating back and forth to the fishing village didn’t leave a traceable magical trail, so he could take such trips for basic supplies as frequently as he liked. If he fancied something more sophisticated to eat than grilled fish and vegetables, or needed replacement for his few appliances, he could always traipse up to Dai Bo-Chry itself where the tourists catering businesses, if crude, had still enough to offer to break monotony. All of which he could accomplish in no heavier disguise than a printed shirt, a pair of flip-flops, and a French accent. British or American ones weren’t good for haggling.

The villagers thought he was a foreign retiree from Dai Bo who appreciated fresh produce. In Dai Bo, he was just another tourist. 

If he truly felt nostalgic, which was a seldom occasion, he could always board the train in either direction for two stations, and portkey to Ho Chi Minh, where a cozy little bar in a colonial house offered a quiet patio, the best Firewhisky to ever touch his palate, and the day’s copy of the Daily Prophet, for the duration of a dose of Polyjuice.

Then, there was the temple on the opposite outskirts of Dai Bo. 

One day, Severus had wandered into the buddhist shrine out of curiosity. He had been greeted by a blind abbot wearing a long white beard who had offered him silent tea. Now he visited the ramshackled pagoda every two months or so, to deliver assorted ointments and medicines, free of charge. Some of his creations the abbot sold to tourists as novelty remedies, or traditional cures. The major part found use with the orphans the temple housed, and with the impoverished locals seeking medical care. 

All this, coupled with a lenient climate in magical regulations and warm skies for the best part of a year, made Snape’s islet a true piece of paradise. Free of irksome insects too after he discovered that a light spraying of Doxicide would keep mosquitoes and sand fleas at bay for a fortnight. 

Yes, Severus had it really good. 

His small, sandy dominion comprised a wood hut with two rooms (one for activities, one for rest), an outhouse, a greenhouse, and the chicken coop, with everything he needed running on two solar panels and the faintest magic. 

The enchanted greenhouse provided him with ingredients for both his pantry and the few potions he still brewed. The chickens provided him with omelettes and the occasional curry. The rest came from the islet’s vegetation, the village, or the sea. 

Every morning, he’d rise from his bamboo bed, mind his poultry, and fix up some juice and eggs before allocating himself lounging time on his chaise longue. Sometimes he read pulp paperbacks or listened to the radio. Nearing noon, he’d take a swim, snack, tidy around, and retreat for a nap in the shade of his hut. During dusk he’d either go fish, forage, curate his plants, or maintain his installations in rotation. After supper, he’d brew, or write, under the moonlight, before banking the fire and retiring to bed. Rinse and repeat come next morning. 

The unplottable charm, which made the islet appear as a heap of drifting junk to both Muggles and wizards, and potions requirement notwithstanding, he only used his wand for minor domestic spells, the most significant being the one waterproofing his hut’s roof - essential during monsoon - and the self-renewing, potable water charm on his faucet that directly connected to the sea.

Sometimes he imagined Lucius observing him, and pointing out with a sneer that he lived like a squib. He’d then reply to his magnificently silver-haired, former friend that, contrary to him, he wasn’t under a life sentence of house arrest with monthly inspections from the Aurors’ office. 

The conditional pardon of the Malfoy family’s elder generation, and full pardon of their heir, was widely touted as a testimony to the Potter boy era’s clemency. But having been a traitor to one side or the other, at one time or another, and graced with neither the money nor personal charm Lucius did, Severus wasn’t going to chance his luck again with close scrutiny. He could remember the stench of Azkaban as vividly as he did the color of Lily’s eyes.

Besides, after falling into the service of two overlords, one after the other, straight out of school, and becoming their sharpest and most subservient tool, while having both of them believe it to be true simultaneously for over two decades; he was quite frankly simply fed up with the whole concept of wizarding society.

Fortunately, from his excruciating service to both lords, he had tediously amassed enough funds to live in modest comfort for the rest of his life while exactly nothing was required of him. And he was very intent on doing just that: being required nothing. 

In a great flutter of flamboyant feathers and a sharp, piercing cry, a large avian landed on the teak tree stump he used as a side table. 

Fawkes spread his wings once as if to salute him, before diving into the bowl of assorted woodworms Snape kept there for that express purpose. 

Yes, his death and tranquility satisfied him plenty. 

Maybe tomorrow he’d go for a massage in Dai Bo-Chry.

  
  



	3. Doctor Faber

“Come again? I didn’t catch that.”

“Sex. I’m asking about the state of your sexual life.”

Harry sometimes wondered if Dr Faber, the shrink Hermione had insisted he see, was quite mad. 

His silent inquiry was only met with a pointed, yet benign look, which rather reminded Harry of a white-bearded Headmaster. Only, on a muggle woman wearing a tweed jacket and jeans. 

“...Well,” Harry began, pulling at the collar of his shirt, “Ginny and I fought a lot, and being a parent, there were the kids to think about, and my job at the Mi— my job is very time consuming, and—”

“So, you’re not having sex.”

“...As I’ve said, Ginny and I, for the past few years, have barely been speaking with each other if not in front of the kids, and there wasn’t a lot of—”

“For how long exactly?”

“...Well, as I was explaining, Ginny and I really started fighting when, at her job, she was asked to change columns or resign. You see, she had a brilliant career that she quit when we had James. But then she was offered a side job that she liked, only her boss told h—”

“Yes, in our past sessions, you’ve already explained that your _ex_ -wife felt you were unsupportive when your career clashed with her need for independence. At length. But, that wasn’t what I was asking. When was the last time you had sex?”

“...”

“...”

“I don’t see how that is relevant.”

“It is relevant.”

“Look, _Doctor_ Faber, I came here to talk about my divorce and if you’d just listen—”

The muggle woman interrupted him again, unapologetically, and repeated her inane question one more time while clearly enunciating each word, as if talking to someone hard of hearing.

“When. Was. The. Last. Time. You. Had. Sex?”

“...”

“...”

“When we conceived Lily.”

After the contraceptive spell’s failure, Ginny had definitively closed down for business on that front, so to speak. 

“Lily, your daughter, with your _ex_ -wife. How old is she now?”

“...Twelve and a half.”

“Do you have any sexual problems? Performance or intimacy issues perhaps?”

“Wh— _No_!”

Harry took a deep breath. Mad and rude, but he promised Hermione he’d give Dr Faber a shot. Besides, now he was used to coming to these sessions, it was somehow important that the stubborn woman behind the desk see things from his perspective. It was unfair that Ginny had even suggested he should quit his job because Harry being a public figure made it hard on her. It wasn’t as if he could help being who he was, even if he did quit the Ministry. And all that so she could have a career in _sports commentary_. And then, he’d only worried something was going on behind his back, the _once_. After she had given him the cold shoulders for _weeks_. And he _had_ tried making it up to her. _So_ many times, and for _so_ long. No, it was important that Dr Faber should _understand_ him.

“No. Everything works fine. I like sex. And having it. Thank you. It’s just that… You see, when Ginny’s boss told her that she couldn’t write for her column anymore because of the hate mail they kept getting, she —”

“Have you ever had sex with a partner other than your wife?”

“...Uh? No. Ginny was the first woman I ever made love to. But _look_ , when at her job, they cut her down because of me, she told me she wanted to write a—”

“During the troubled times in your relationship with your _ex_ -wife, you did not have other partners?”

Harry gaped at that one. Completely insane.

“What? _What_ ? _No!_ Absolutely not! I would never betray my wife like that. We were married! How _dare_ you accuse me of...of...adultery! Look, it wasn’t my fault — the divorce, it wasn’t! _She_ kept saying that _I_ was selfish! _Selfish_ ! _Me_!”

Dr Fabre paused in her note taking and simply looked at him. Harry, who had half-risen from his chair during his petulant outburst, flopped back down, his ears reddening like a schoolboy. 

The office remained silent for a moment. 

“It wasn’t an accusation. Simply a question,” Dr. Faber said kindly. She looked at her watch. “That should do for today, my next appointment is waiting. Same time, next week.”

Harry hid his sniffle with a nod. He was a grown man, father of three, damn it. Still not speaking, he got up, searched his jacket and handed the mousy haired woman the consultation fee. 

He paused at her desk.

“I...I thought about it. About...having an affair, that is. We just fought so damn much, but I was _married_.”

Not to mention the bloody headlines if anything had gotten out. 

Harry sighed the spiteful thought away. 

Everytime he thought about it, which was still quite often, he wondered how they could have failed so hard because of so little. But through no fault of his own, or his ex-wife’s, really, his marriage had just felt like a tiny, suffocating cage for a long time. A feeling shared by both parties involved, he was sure. He had loved his ex-wife. In fact, he still loved her. She was perfect. They’d just grown into two people who couldn’t stand the sight of the other. 

“Well, you are divorced now.”

Before he could reply, the muggle doctor and psychoanalyst rose from her desk and politely led him to the door of her office.


	4. The Stranger

“It’s hot enough to sear a man alive, don't you think?”

Severus gave the stranger who had approached him a glance over. Dark hair, light tan, not over fifty. 

“I presume you are looking for sex,” stated Severus.

“Why, aren’t we quite forward mister…?” replied the stranger.

“Weasley. Charles Weasley,” lied Severus, without missing a beat.

“Tell me Mr. _Charles Weasley_ , do you always assume perfect strangers you’ve met only two seconds ago want sex from you?” asked the stranger. “I could be simply looking for a gentlemanly conversation, you know.” 

“If they buy me a drink and rub my knee while initiating said conversation, yes. And no, I don’t think so,” responded Snape.

The stranger plunked himself down on the rattan settee he previously had to himself and didn't look abashed to the slightest. In fact, if the lascivious smile slowly creeping on his lips was anything to judge by, it rather seemed Snape’s dry introduction had only piqued his interest further.

With old reflexes and practiced skill, Severus cautiously hummed the blue drink the stranger had ordered and handed to him. Juniper, citrus and clove, with an inkling of quinine.

A completely inconspicuous Sapphire Martini. 

He took a sip.

If uninspired, the cocktail was well balanced with spirits of passable quality. It didn’t surprise him as, after his massage at the spa of one of Dai Bo’s posher hotels, he had chosen to while away the hottest hours at the terrace lounge. The kitschy water fountain made for a change of scenery, the ambient playing of the piano was not disagreeable, the relative affluence of the atmosphere made for a smaller crowd - it was deserted until now - and spared him the sight of junkies, while the pricing still remained well within his scope if he didn’t make a habit of it.

In fact, judging by the polished material of his clothes, as well as his perfect Oxford English, the stranger must be upper class from out of town. Perhaps a bored businessman from Ho Chi Minh looking for a tryst. Rebarbative opener aside, his bronze skin and slanting features were pleasant enough, and the way his silken shirt taunted at the chest was certainly heartening. 

Serverus graced the stranger with a slow blink. 

“Not to say that conversation, gentlemanly or otherwise, would be unwelcome.”

The stranger’s smile broadened further.

Of course, nothing would come of it. Severus was still very much pledged to the Chastity Covenant, and he had absolutely no intention of throwing away the protection the Pledge procured him for a bit of hokey-pokey — whether he lived like a squib or not.

Indeed, at the ripe age of nineteen, Snape had vowed away his sex life while performing an ancient ritual that involved unicorns’ mane, ladybirds’ penises and a fair amount of his own pristine spunk. 

It was a perfectly logical decision, motivated by sheer pants-shitting terror. After all, he had then just agreed to betray, on a full-time basis, the most sadistic and evil-bent jackass to yet grace wizarding history. One that had christened himself with the title of Lord, denomination: Death. 

Being the scrawny little wizard of no remarkable means nor connections he was, Severus had then rather fancied the idea of a life of abstinence if, in exchange, he was traded with even remotely better chances in a game of certain demise. 

Plus, at the time, the cold-blooded murder through his own indiscretion of the only person he had ever cared for and ever imagined himself with, plunged him into a genuine midnight of the soul of such dramatic proportion that wishing for banalities of the flesh had seemed downright petty. 

And so, without so much as a shrug from his shoulders, he began a lifetime of virginal deportment. 

Certainly, he had had plenty of times to regret his choice in the ensuing years, the lull of relative uneventfulness during Potter’s infancy being the most tempting; but he never quite did, whether out of contempt or habits.

Albus would say that it was love, of course, the fool. 

Snape rather suspected it had more to do with a continued state of alarm about his own survival as well as the unsavory, sometimes squarely unhygienic company he was to keep. 

Not to mention that the ancient devotional spell had proven more than useful. It had afforded him with mental defenses no nineteen-year-old had the right to master, blunted the maw of the Cruciatus curse on more occasions than he cared to count, made the Summon possible to delay, and convincingly lie about it afterward not mere wishful thinking. Right down to the very end where only the combination of a hollowed tooth filled with a potion of his own device, the unparalleled curing properties of phoenix tears, and the Pledge’s warding strength against all influences of evil had saved his neck — barely and literally. 

And its protection had nurtured his magical abilities too. When the mind was lightened of worries, one’s concentration and focus grew, allowing magic to flow more freely, so much so that his commitment to the Pledge became an integral part of him. 

At times, astonished with his own prowess, he had wondered if his vow was a secret all great wizards shared. But Albus’ decaying hand disabused him of the notion. By the age he was affected with it, and if he should have taken it, the protection the pledge granted would have grown so strong within him that Albus could have shaken off the Marvolo Ring’s curse as a mere party trick. As for his other master, Bellatrix’s shagged-out-of-her-mad-brain eyes swiftly convinced him otherwise. 

No, both his lords, whilst not his superiors in intellect, were born with the kind of prodigious raw power that he himself never possessed. They were men of gift, where he, Severus, was one of sacrifice. 

Still, a man could do with a touch of fantasy. And it’s not as if Severus could count such opportunities on more than one hand, much less those coming from such a non-objectionable source. 

“You have very nice eyes, Charles,” the stranger flirted. “And with that nose, very unusual. Exotic, even. Where could you possibly be coming from?” 

Drivel, Snape thought. “Egypt. I’m Egyptian, born in Cairo,” he lied again.

“Hmm.... Egyyyptian… I can see that. Still, so mysterious. I’ve never been to Egypt you know…” The stranger’s hand that had briefly grazed his knee while handing him his drink returned more insistently to Snape’s thigh.

Severus allowed it. “You should come visit. It's sphynx mating season this time of the year,” he replied.

The stranger giggled as if he had said something funny. “Mating season, eh? And you would know all about that, wouldn’t you, mister mysterious Egyptian from Cairo?” The hand commenced a light petting motion.

Tuning out the babble, Severus concentrated on sizing up the stranger’s physique in closer detail. Fine pectorals indeed, very nice waistline, and a shapely crotch.

“It’s not my area of expertise, no. But one hears the _aurorae sphyngeinis_ they produce are quite spectacular.”

Another peal of giggles was heard as the stranger’s body drew closer.

Severus continued cataloguing the clearly well-maintained frame before him while being subjected to various imbecilic purrs and sly near-caresses. The latter didn’t leave his own anatomy indifferent. At some point he gave up his end of the inane dialogue and just let himself be teased. Of course he’d have to stop the proceedings before long, but for the time being, with his bones still loose from his earlier massage, the warm buzz from his drinks, and the warmer touches of the athletic man in the shade from the hot sun, he was quite content to... 

As unexpectedly as they had begun, the fleeting touches stopped. 

Severus, who had inadvertently closed them, opened his eyes to find the stranger gone. 

The man had emitted a high pitched gasp, before taking off with all haste. 

Snape looked down to check himself. He was still fully clothed and not even disheveled. His nascent erection was showing under his linen pants, but he’d rather thought that that was the point.

Blinking mutely, he wondered if acute abstinence could lead to hallucinations. But the half empty blue drink left behind by the stranger, twin to his own, attested otherwise. Severus never gnawed at the orange rind.

Sometime later, Severus exited the hotel. He was more annoyed than he’d care to admit as he slowly made his way through throngs of excited vacationers, toward the town’s less crowded streets.

Leaving Dai Bo behind, he passed green fields and footed dirt paths until a cluster of houses on stilts was in sight. Villagers were busily loading their boats for the floating market. The touristy one that sold dank goods at exorbitant prices. Severus trudged up to the farmer’s house on the small hill where he usually bought his supplies. There were no palm thatch left, but fresh ones could be kept for him if he came by tomorrow, at the stall. Severus agreed and, charged with a parcel of assorted vegetables, directed himself to an area with denser vegetation behind the cover of which he apparated home with a pop.

That night, to avenge himself upon the day, Snape did not wank when he retired to bed.


	5. Ronald Weasley

“The weather is great, don’t you think?”

Harry cringed inwardly at hearing the sentence that just came out of his own mouth. Wow, smooth.

“I mean, we’ve had snow for a week, and today it’s not snowi—sunny! It’s sunny! Not not snowing. I mean, it’s nice to have a bit of clear sky, with the sun shining, and… and all.”

He could feel his ears were reddening. 

Harry was standing in front of Sugarplum's Sweets Shop, the boutique facing Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. His friends’ shop was crowded as usual, so Harry had preferred to wait outside for Ron to come out, before heading down to the Leaky for a pint.

A woman of approximately his own age had come to stand beside him. Harry saw her let a small girl go into the joke shop earlier. She was waiting, just like him. Her hair was nice, honey blonde and flowy. He didn’t recognize her from Hogwarts, or work, or the many functions he attended. They had been standing side by side for a while, and she hadn’t asked him for an autograph or brought up learning about his divorce in the papers while suggestively parading her bust. She just stood there, with a bag of purchases at her feet, checking her watch from time to time. No husband had come into sight.

In a fit of lunacy, he thought he’d strike up a conversation. 

The woman didn’t seem to mind his rambling and smiled shyly at him.

“Yes, it’s nice today. You are Harry Potter, aren’t you?”

Harry smiled back.

Everything was going fine. The woman’s name turned out to be Isabella. Her daughter he saw earlier was ten. She had another one who was just sorted into Hufflepuff. No, she hadn’t attended Hogwarts herself; she was sent to Beauxbatons. She worked as a translator for Flourish and Blotts’ edition house and didn’t go out much, but still recognized him. No mention of a spouse. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Isabella. Very nice. Um, look, my friend is coming anytime now, but, would you like to go for coffee sometimes?”

The woman looked surprised, and fidgeted on her feet. Her smile faltered a bit but it must be because she felt nervous.

“Oh, I didn’t expect—I mean... Um, well, yes. Okay. Why not?”

“Great! Um, do you have a place you’d like to go to? Somewhere quiet preferably.”

“...Oh well, there’s always Tatling’s. They have a tea salon upstairs I go to now and then. It’s quiet. Hardly anyone’s ever there.”

“Sure! That sounds fine. I’m free Saturday. Is that alright with you?”

“Oh, uh, yeah. Um, I’d rather it be a weekday. I mean, Dina is home on the weekends and I have to look after her so…”

“Oh. Oh! Of course! Of course, I didn’t mean... Well, what about next week then? Tuesday, lunchti—ompf!”

“Oi mate!”

Ron had just crashed into him, clasping him into a tight hug around the shoulder with a long, strong arm.

“Hi there, _Ron_. Isabella, that would be my friend Ron. Ron this Isa—”

“Yeah, ok. We gotta go Harry. If you’ll excuse us, _Madam_.”

With that, Ron dragged him off from his perfectly fine conversation, manu militari.

Deaf to his protests, and in spite of his struggling, his best friend didn’t release his wrestling grip until they were seated in a mufflatio’d corner booth at the Leaky. 

“What the _hell_ was that!” 

“What do you mean? You should be thanking me. Hullo Mitsy, bitters and bangers, for two, please.”

“Ron, you _can’t_ keep batting off any female that comes within a speaking distance from me! We _are_ divorced. _Your mum_ told me she’s seeing someone. I have a right to—”

“Oh yeah, Jones, runs Muggle Mechanisms. We buy from him. Nice bloke. Look, didn’t you recognize her?”

“What? Who? Isabella? I don’t—”

“Yeah, the gal you were chatting up. She’s Isabella Rokwood, isn’t she? Her stepdad was a Death Eater, remember?”

“...Her family serving Voldemort doesn’t mean that she herself is in anyway…” Harry weakly protested.

“She is _married._ ”

“So _what_ ? Maybe she isn’t happy, and she’s looking for someone she likes better! And that someone could be _me_!”

“Married to _Otho Rokwood_ , the bloke you put in the nick five years ago for Major Muggle Meddling. Rings a bell?”

“...”

“Thanks, Mitsy. Could we get a side of fried onions too, please?”

The image of a slim, crying witch at a trial he had attended as chief witness was slowly resurfacing in Harry’s mind. He thought he recognized Isabella from somewhere. More importantly, in his memory, the slightly younger version of the woman he had talked to a few minutes ago hadn’t seemed even remotely happy with her husband being put away.

“... Oh my god. Oh my Merlin’s god. She must have thought she had to go on a date with me or something would happen to her husband.”

“Yup, sounds about right. That, or blackmail material, or both. Look, don’t tell Hermione I ate here alright? She says my chocolate-roll is too high and—”

“Cholesterol. It’s cholesterol.”

“Yeah, that. She’s been feeding me tofu-steaks for weeks. You know about tofu? The stuff’s bloody disgusting. It looks like meat, it smells like meat, but it tastes like rotten eggs with—”

“I’m going to be alone for the rest of my life. Any witches I meet either want to have sex with me so they can sell their story to Witch Weekly, or they want The-Boy-Who-Lived on their trophy board. The rest think something is going to happen to them if they don’t go on a fucking date with the head of the MLE.”

“Oi, do you want to tell me more about how much you want to boink it off with someone who isn’t my sister while bragging about you being you?”

“There aren’t that many of them, you know. Witches, I mean. Back in school, it felt like the world was this infinite cornucopia of opportunities. But when you’re middle-aged and divorced with kids, you realize how tiny the pool really is. Like a tiny little pond where everyone else is married and happy, except you. And—”

“Ginny’s doing alright. She found herself a new bloke pretty quick.”

“...A teeny weeny little pond with teeny weeny little frogs who are either unsuitable or otherwise engaged in it. Alone. For the rest of my life, I tell you.”

“You wanna have your bangers? Mind if I help myself?”

Harry must have looked truly miserable, because Ron stopped shovelling sausage into his mouth for a minute.

“Look there, mate. Not that I want anything to do with it, but have you tried muggle ones? Women to date, I mean. George tells me they are pretty wild, the muggles. They have special places they go to to hook up and everything. He went around some - before settling down with Angie, that is. Why don’t you try that?”

Harry hoped his embarrassment wasn’t showing. 

He’d been around, so to speak. In fact, after their drink, he was meeting Anna in a discreet hotel in New York. 

Nothing would come of it, of course. After a small sample of what the Muggle Internet had to offer in terms of adult encounters, which left little impression on him beside a vague sense of feeling grimy, he had met the long-legged quadragenarian on a trip for an international conference on Magical Law Enforcement Cooperation. 

After a day of meeting, he had spotted a muggle club near his hotel. He went to her because the secluded corner she was in was quieter, and it took off from there. It was strictly sexual between them. In fact they barely talked - what with them having absolutely nothing in common, and her wanting to stay married to her big shot CEO husband just fine, thank you. But when they met, which was about twice a month, they got it on like raging rabbits. In a way he was sure raging rabbits would approve of. Every time, he left with his head and balls thoroughly empty, and just about enough energy remaining to apparate home and crash into bed for a night of slumber of the living dead.

After more than a decade of self-enforced conjugal loyalty to a turned back, it did feel good to have his prick being sucked so dry he could taste tiny stars. So he knew the fee he paid Dr Faber wasn’t a waste. But he still woke up the next morning to find himself eating breakfast alone, with Kreacher as sole conversation maker. 

“It’s just not the same. I mean, it’s not only about boinking it off as you’ve put it. I’d like someone whom I can share my life with. The lot, you know. And understand it.”

“Oh, so you want someone who’d understand what it’s like to grow up with abusive muggle relatives, risk their life every day to fight off a homicidal maniac since being a teenager, be in a position of authority where people’s lives depend on his every decision, and still want to raise three kids. Yeah, I really do wonder why you are divorced, mate.”

Harry knew Ron was trying to call him off his bullshit, though he ended up sounding fond. He was also sincerely grateful his best friend went out of his way to stay neutral, although he suspected Ron still hoped he and Ginny would somehow make up, but, yes, that was exactly what he wanted.

He sighed into his beer morosely.


	6. Rodolphus Lestrange

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some depiction of violence in this chapter. Nothing too bad, but please be warned.

Living in a foreign country with a radically different language also had the advantage that, when one could close one’s eyes and not understand a word of the conversations taking place around oneself, humanity was a perfectly acceptable occurrence, in small measure.

Today, however, Severus wasn’t graced with that privilege. 

The market was crowded as usual. Unusually, it was also abuzz with a peculiar interest toward his person. Indeed, as he waded through the throngs of locals making daily life purchases, merchants and buyers alike stared and pointed at him. In front of him, they murmured and smirked behind concealing hands; once his back was turned, straightforward laughters could be heard. 

Snape frowned. If, when he was out and about, his height and decidedly occidental features did still attract a perfunctory second glance or two, despite the natural color of his hair and his sunbathed complexion, the villagers of Can Noh had long since gotten used to the irregular presence amongst them of a dour foreigner who bought food and spices and didn’t linger. So that he was normally never paid interest to beyond the potential of his trade. Today’s occurrence was therefore puzzling.

Amidst jeering titters, he finally arrived at the farmer’s stall. 

“Chao buoi sang. I came for the palm thatch. Palm. Thatch,” Snape articulated as he mimicked a dome over his head with his hand.

The familiar knobby farmer grinned at him, revealing a row of tobacco-stained teeth.

“Xin chao. Toi co la co. Palm for roof, yes, yes,” he answered before plodding toward a cart behind him from which he retrieved Snape’s behest.

While Severus examined the armload of carefully plaited palm leaves, the farmer uncharacteristically made an attempt at chit-chat. 

“You chickens shirt man, yes? Chickens shirt big story! You chickens shirt, yes?”

Snape, having no idea what the man was getting at and feeling rather foul, replied with his usual conversation buffer.

“Sorree, I don’t speak English.”

Undeterred, the farmer soldiered on with his endeavour at communication and spoke to him with the few European words he knew while making increasingly wild gestures. 

“You! Big story! Poulet. Chickens shirt man. Photo. Big, big story!”

A glossy newspaper then appeared in the farmer’s hand. It had Snape’s face on it.

Severus stared speechlessly at the paper held at him for several seconds, before schooling his features into what he hoped to be an expression that conveyed his discontent adequately.

“I’ll take that too” he hissed, while snagging away the newspaper from the farmer’s hand. Adding a few changes to the agreed-upon price, he gathered his things and took off without another word. He made quick work of exiting the market with sharp elbows and long strides.

Once home, with his purchases unceremoniously dumped on the front steps leading to his hut, Severus sat at the long plane of wood that served as his workbench, dinner table and desk, to further investigate the photograph that occupied most of the real estate on today’s front page of the Saigon Post. 

It was a zoom in of an image taken from some distance, featuring Snape, dressed in the turquoise shirt with small chickens prints he wore sometimes, seated face to face with the polished stranger of yesterday’s encounter on the hotel’s rattan settee. One of the stranger’s hands was on Snape’s thigh, the other curled into Snape’s hair. Snape’s three quarter profile was eminently identifiable next to the stranger’s face.

Fuming, Severus cast a translation spell on the paper. As the tiny Vietnamese prints rearranged themselves into English words, he read:

> **_PRIME MINISTER SPOTTED WITH GAY LOVER_**
> 
> _Tran Nguyen, Prime Minister of Vietnam, married to star singer Susie Anh and father to twin infant sons, was seen yesterday afternoon in a compromising position with a foreign escort at the Green Lagoon Resorts and Spa in Dai Bo-Chry. The newly elected Prime Minister, who has long been a controversial figure in the Party’s politics on such issues as the sovereignty of our beloved Socialist Republic of Vietnam over the 78th parallel, has shown at last his true color of depravity by displaying inappropriate behavior in public with an unnamed but locally well-known foreign prostitute at a luxurious hotel on our beautiful coast. Indeed, amidst raising real-estate prices due to foreign speculations causing the impoverishment of our worker class, Tran Nguyen’s scandalous gallivanting with a foreign, male sex-worker who couldn’t be reached for comment at the time of this writing proves to be a..._

Severus stopped reading. 

As a bone-chilling calm descended upon him, he silently incendio’d his print of the Saigon Post. One of the hundred of thousands of copies that must be circulating all over Vietnam and South-East Asia by now; notwithstanding what would be on the interplanetary gossip system the Muggles called the Internet, which should already have reached England. 

He watched the paper burn to tiny black wisps and tinier grey ashes.

The table beneath his elbows and the ground underneath his feet trembled with repressed magic. 

To compound his furor, he felt a sharp twinge at his neck, in a spot that hadn’t hurt in over twenty years. Reflexively, Snape put a hand to his nape and winced. The spot was tender to the touch.

Severus stood up slowly and, fighting the state of panic that was creeping upon him, he went to a dusty chest from which he retrieved a plain barber’s mirror. Holding it up, there — in his reflection — he saw it. Where Nagini had bit, and where previously was skin restored to its pristine state by Fawkes’s tear, a rash of motley color resembling that on Albus’ cursed hand was becoming visible, just faintly, like a ghostly shadow. 

It couldn’t be, he thought, his pulse genuinely picking up now. He hadn’t come close enough to actual congress for the Pledge to be broken. His eyes must play tricks on him because he felt shaken. It couldn’t possibly be… Unless... Unless…

Before he could ponder the matter further, a loud cracking noise accompanied by a sound resembling thunderclap resonated through the air, and Severus found himself bound from head to toes in vine-like ropes. 

As the barber’s mirror fell from his hand and smashed into pieces, his body hit the wooden-floor with a thud. 

“Depello!” the spell sounded in a ragged, angry voice; and Snape’s wand flew out of his grasp. 

A second later, Snape stared into the grimy face of Rodolphus Lestrange.

“Why, hello there, Severus.”

“Les... Lestrange,” Snape greeted the intruder in a rasp, his windpipes compressed by ropes, “did... did Azkaban get broken through again? The place’s... got more holes in it than Swiss cheese.”

Lestrange cackled at that and, while crouching over Severus’ prone form with his voice pitched in a deranged half singsong-half hiss, he sprayed spit into Snape’s face, “Yes, that’d be you. Silver tongued Severus Snape, our Lord’s sharpest knife. The one that in the end cut him deepest.”

“I... I did not betray the Dark Lord,” Snape tried to defend, gasping for breath. The ropes were getting tighter. The one at his neck burned, cutting into him like a branding iron. 

“Silence, traitor!” Lestrange yelled, his eyes bloodshot and quite mad. “Do not sully our Lord’s name with your filthy mouth!” He landed a blow on Severus' nose, making him see stars.

Snape coughed and spat. “Lestrange… Lestrange, listen to me, I have no qualm with you,” he tried to placate as the iron tinged taste of blood filled his mouth.

“ _Crucio_!” was the answer.

The long forgotten but familiar curse hit Severus like a boulder falling off a cliff and trampling all in its wake; it made everything in him contract as pain soared white behind his eyelids. Bound as he was, he could not even struggle.

“Rodolphus!” Severus cried out as the Unforgivable relented slightly, “I can help you!”

“Silence, I said!” Lestrange yelled again as he landed another blow to Snape’s face. “You killed her! She is _dead_ ! Because of _you_ ! _Crucio_!”

Someone screamed in the distance as the curse seized him again; its intensity doubled. Severus knew it must have been him, though he could not feel his own mouth. On the verge of passing out, the only coherent thought that came to Severus’ mind was that, yes, the Lestranges were always talented with that brand of dark magic, something about an extravagant sense of schadenfreude. With that he dove with old practice deep within his own mind, into the place he reserved for such occasions.

The Cruciatus curse could be said to be trivial insofar as it shared the same time-bending propriety that any other truly tedious experience possessed; and so, it is some centuries later that Snape felt the torture spell lift. 

Of course, in reality, it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours, or a few minutes, even mere seconds. Though knowing Lestrange, the first was more likely than the latter.

Severus caught himself before he could sigh in relief. Feigning unconsciousness was more advantageous. Making his breath deep and even, he cautiously opened one eye to a slit.

The thickset and bedraggled spouse of the late and unlamented Bellatrix Lestrange had gotten up from his crouching position and was taking stock of Snape’s hut; leisurely trashing his things - bowls, cutlery, ink bottles, vials, books, etc. - by nonchalantly dropping them to the floor as he went. He seemed calmer, no doubt feeling refreshed after convecting some of his venom into the Cruciatus. 

Snape, still bound and lain on the floor, could not see his wand anywhere from his position. He tried summoning it silently, to no avail. 

“Tsk, tsk. I wouldn’t try that again,” said Lestrange, producing Severus' wand and dangling it from his fingers like a metronome’s needle. “I like the spare, but I’ll break it if I need to.”

Severus chose to remain silent while he gathered his breath and rode out the tremors of adrenaline still coursing through him.

“You’ve done alright for yourself, haven’t you? And they say Lucius is the slimy one,” the former Death Eater said conversationally, as he continued to tour Snape’s hut. “But then, he was never as smart as you. Grew up with too many privileges and not enough hunger. Told Bella they were a bad influence. Made her soft.”

Snape inwardly snorted at the notion of Bellatrix Lestrange and the adjective soft being put together in the same sentence. He tried to placate the intruder again, his voice as calm and even as he could make it.

“Bellatrix was devoted to our Lord, she died serving him with honour.”

The ropes around him tightened once more, but no Cruciatus followed.

“Flattery, that’s how you got close to Him, was it? Won’t work with me. I know you despised her. I know you despised _me_. Laughing behind my back, calling me a cuckold.”

If anything, the bizarre state of affair between the mad witch and Voldemort was something even the most perverse characters of the Inner Circle avoided mentioning — so shudder-some the thing was. Severus, however, kept that thought to himself. 

“Her devotion to our Lord was boundless,” he tried instead.

Which was the wrong thing to say. He felt the deep slash open across his left cheek as more blood poured into his mouth. Ah, yes, non-verbal knife work was another of the Lestranges’ specials.

“Do not mock me! I will not take it! Not coming from _you_!” Lestrange screeched, suddenly agitated anew; and a piece of crinkly paper Severus guessed to be the Saigon Post was pressed against his face.

“Yes, you filthy ponce. I will not take mockery from the likes of you!” 

The smell of printing ink filled Severus' nostrils.

“Tell me, did you suck his cock too? Was Snivelly in his ivory tower, a little cocksucker?” Lestrange teased as he rubbed the newspaper into the broken skin of Snape’s face. 

Severus bit down on his own tongue.

“Many of us wondered, you know? You never were one to stay for afters, were you? No, no. Not snotty Severus Snape, always too good for a bit of sport!” 

Suddenly throwing away the newspaper, Lestrange spat into Severus’ face. The fetid, warm liquid ran into Snape’s eyes. He closed them shut. 

“But not so proud now, are you?” Lestrange sneered, as a finger mixed saliva with blood.

“Now, now, let’s see. What shall I do with you?” continued Lestrange, calmer once more as he straddled Severus’ restrained body. “I’ve been looking for you for quite some time, you see. Very hard to track — you are slimy after all. Most of us were convinced you were dead too. But not me, I knew you were still alive. And I was right! When I saw that headline in Bangkok, I couldn’t believe my luck. I apparated south right then! And you made it easy too, I still couldn’t see your hidey-hole, but that little tantrum you threw earlier? Showed up on the ley lines like fireworks!”

“ _Pay attention_!” Lestrange barked as he slapped Severus across the face, the burning imprint of his palm more humiliating than true blood. 

Severus schooled his face into as impassible a mask as he could conjure as he re-opened his eyes to the vision of the unkempt dark wizard grinning maniacally at him. He would not to give Lestrange the pleasure, he only had to wait for the right opening. 

Lestrange, having wooed his audience back, continued his monologue. “So yes, after all the wait, it would be quite the shame to finish up too quickly. Though I do hope you realize you are finished.” Lestrange punctuated his sentence with another lazy slap. 

“No, no, let’s not hurry. Not after all the years, all the effort. Let’s take our time and enjoy ourselves. And you know what, maybe I’ll kill two birds with one stone.”

The grin on Lestrange’s face turned truly evil then. He summoned his copy of the Saigon Post to him again, and making a show of stroking suggestively the blood-marred reproduction of Snape’s figure, he asked, “Tell me, did you know Rastaban rather fancied you?”

In the tropical afternoon heat, Severus’ sweat felt like icicles running down his spine. He eluded the repugnant implication and tried for pacification once more: Rodolphus had worked as an Unspeakable, and, whilst as mad as his late wife, he wasn’t all incompetent.

“The passing of your brother is regrettable, he was a true servant to our cause. Should he ha—”

“Save it, traitor! His blood is on your hands too!” A blow, to his ribcage this time. 

“But since you regret my brother so much, I’m sure you won’t mind if I fulfill a wish of his on his behalf,” Lestrange said, as Severus felt a pincers-like squeeze on his buttock. “So that both of them, Bella and Rastaban, may rest in peace in their shared grave. Avenged and sated, at last.”

“Oh yes, did you not know?” Lestrange suddenly mused, “That’s how they were buried. Both of them. They were dumped into a communal grave. Like lowly house-elves. Like bloody house-elves of the basest rank! Did you know? Did you know? Did you bloody well know?” 

Lestrange, having seized Severus by the ropes encircling him, was knocking Severus’ whole upper-body against the ground with each demented rhetorical question. Severus’ head repeatedly hit the hard-wood planks with reverberating thunks.

After a while of this treatment, Lestrange abruptly stopped and let Severus drop back down to the floor. Breathing heavily, Lestrange combed his hand through his hair. Then, having seemingly recomposed himself, he produced his wand and, smiling evilly again, rested its tip against Snape’s chest.

“So, what do you say, uh, Severus? Are you up for a bit of fun?” Lestrange had dimmed his voice to a low, mocking hiss, and, with the air around his wand’s tip sharpened to a blade, he cut loose a button on Severus’ shirt while leering wickedly into Snape's face. The tiny white button sprang away to land on the floor beside them with a small plink. 

Rigid with tension, with his breathing laboured and his head still dizzy, Snape nonetheless replied quietly, “I don’t see how you may accomplish what you are threatening me with, while I’m tied up like this.”

Lestrange cackled madly again. “Ever the silver tongue, Severus, trying to get me to untie you. You wish!” Another gash opened across Severus’ mouth. Then, with his voice suddenly back to slithery, he added, “But you know what, I rather think you’re giving me ideas.” And Lestrange pointed his wand at Severus. 

“Imper—”

“ _No! Don’t you dare_ !” Snape bellowed, thrashing wildly in his restraints, all notions of passiveness forgotten as true panic descended upon him, “ _Release me at once, or I swear I’ll make you pay_!”

But his heavier set aggressor was strong and couldn't be dislodged. Lestrange carried on taunting Severus with only renewed glee, “Ahaha! Afraid yet, traitor? Afraid I’m going to make you beg? Come on, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, you filthy—”

“Your wife was a deranged _whore_! Only a brain addled tramp like her could stomach both you and that monster! And your brother? A pathetic piece of cowardly shite! May they rot with the garbage, they were worth as much!”

At that, Lestrange, with his eyes exhorbitated in fury, flung himself at Snape, both his hands closing around Severus’ neck.

“ _Shut your_ —”

The moment Lestrange’s face came into range, Snape head-butted him viciously, and, in the split second of disorientation that followed, Severus called Lestrange’s wand to him. It almost worked too as Lestrange’s wand started slipping from its master’s hand, but Lestrange recovered too quickly, and he tightened his grip, holding onto his weapon firmly once more. 

Snape could only watch as his opportunity for escape slipped from him, and Lestrange once again pointed his wand into Snape’s face. The crazed man’s eyes gleamed with fury as the first syllable of the subjugating curse formed on his lips anew.

Snape, near suffocation and awash with genuine fear, desperately tried to think, but no solution presented itself. He would have to resist…

At that moment, with a shrill, piercing cry, Fawkes blazed through the air, into the hut, and landed his sharp talons on Lestrange’s face. 

Seizing the opening that Lestrange’s recoil offered, Snape launched up and into his aggressor with all his might, toppling them both until Lestrange landed backward onto the floor with Snape atop him, his wand clattering away. 

Snape then, without pausing for breath, summoned his own wand. It came to him this time, with its captor incapacitated, and slipped into his still-bound hand. Wordlessly, Snape dispelled the rope restraining him and, bearing down on the excruciating pain of blood rushing back into his limbs, he was about to curse his aggressor when the latter kneed him straight to the solar plexus. 

Winded for a second, Severus was kicked aside, but not before he could land a spell that seared away the hair and scalp on half of Lestrange’s head. 

Lestrange, who had just retrieved his own wand, yelped loudly, and Severus saw the flash of hesitation in Lestrange’s eyes — assessing both the now armed Snape and his unexpected airborne aid — before the grimy mad-man, with a loud crack that resonated through the air, vanished into a cloud of dark smoke.

Snape aimed a bright ball of red light after the dissipating smoke, the strongest repelling curse he could muster, before collapsing to the floor.

He was bathed in sweat, grim and blood, and every cell within him ached in pulsation. He couldn’t help his whimper as he felt Fawkes saunter close to him and trickle soothing tears onto his face.

For a long time he just lay there, not wishing to get up for what he had to do.

Some two or three hours later, from the distance of a slim barge he had used for fishing, Severus watched the last ten years of his life crumble into flames. 

Hugging a small briefcase to himself, he seized the conch shell he had turned into a portkey and felt the tug behind his navel that would take him to the first place he knew to go, and the last place he wanted to go to. 


	7. Malfoy Manor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks you to mitzvahmelting and Aeternum for beta reading! <3<3<3

Harry took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. Over twenty years after his worst enemy’s defeat, the past still wouldn’t remain where it bloody belonged.

The latest Voldemort associated trouble was ironically a group of zealous vigilantes hell-bent on history never repeating itself. They called themselves Anti-Lords and had formed a sort of informal, underground clique whose stated purpose was to bring former Voldemort sympathizers and assorted dark wizards to justice to prevent another tyrant rising. 

The group was mostly just-coming-of-age kids who had family ties to the people who fought at his side at the Battle of Hogwarts. They were harmless enough, as they usually just circulated tracts and maintained the tradition of an encrypted radio program retelling war stories; with only the few worrying elements who had been outspoken about the need to exterminate all traces of dark magic on occasions such as Victory Day — but so far nothing had gone beyond the realm of impassioned speeches. 

Lately, however, reports of targeted incivility had been on the rise: a series of minor acts of vandalism and interpersonal aggressions aimed at pureblood wizards and witches.

Nothing serious enough to require intervention by the Wizengamot even, but Harry still felt uneasy.

He had already taken a firm stance in the press on the matter with a message of no tolerance for prejudice of any sort, and the need to move on as a culture, but the multi-headed, militia-like movement still claimed allegiance to The-Boy-Who-Lived in their various efforts, acting as if there was a tacit understanding that he, Harry Potter, wasn’t expected to compromise his official position. 

To complicate the matter, Harry suspected from patterns in reports that he knew a handful of anonymous Anti-Lords — personally.

Shaking himself out of his vexation, Harry made a pile of the documents he had just reviewed and signed. He put it in the tray for his assistant to dispatch and straightened his clothes for the last task of his day.

A handful of floo powder later, he was speckling ashes on a rich Persian carpet that covered marble floors.

“Mr. Potter.”

“Good evening, Mr. Malfoy.”

“I take it Stanford wasn’t available today.”

“No, um, no.”

“Well, be my guest then. Not that you need my permission.”

Harry didn’t comment on Lucius’ arctic tone. Any personal animosity he held toward the arrogant wizard had long since washed away with time and the responsibilities of adulthood. Besides, since Narcissa’s passing after a long illness and Draco leaving the manor to start his own family, the now sexagenarian Malfoy patriarch had become a lonesome figure that walked with a limp, a sickly shadow of his former self. 

Without a word, Harry parted way with his begrudging host at the bottom of the grand staircase, and started his inspection of the building, checking the surveillance spells in place as he went.

The full tour of the Manor took at least half an hour, so grand the place was. Although it wasn’t his usual job, Harry was familiar enough with it to make quick work of checking each room and their accompanying Sedition Sensor. 

Passing crystal chandeliers, marble mantles, and velvet curtains onto intimate boudoirs and mirror-laden loos, he would feel pity for anyone having to live every day of their lives under such close scrutiny with no possibility of reprieve ever; but then he’d reach the basement in which he once was held prisoner, remember the scars Hermione had received here, and find himself agreeing with the best side of caution. 

Malfoy the elder may live in a gilded cage, but it was still gilded. 

As he finished inspecting the library, Harry retraced his steps to the formal parlor. Lucius, who was waiting for him in the lavishly decorated yet frigid room, wordlessly handed him his wand: a ministry issue made of poplar and unicorn hair — the materials least easily turned to dark magic according to Garrick Ollivander. 

While Harry performed Priori Incantatem on it, Lucius broke the silence.

“Have you found everything to be suitable to your taste, Mr. Potter?”

Harry didn’t rise to the bait. “My taste has nothing to do with it, Mr. Malfoy,” he replied, without lifting his eyes from the list of spells flowing in ghostly letters in front of him. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you I’m simply acting according to my duty,”

For a moment it felt like Malfoy may argue, but when Harry handed him his wand back, a thin smile was stretching the gaunt wizard’s lips.

From his checkup, Harry had found nothing unusual beside a series of Tongue Curling Curses. He already knew from past reports that they were likely aimed at house-elves and doubted he’d receive a different answer if he asked now. Distasteful but not unlawful, or truly dark. Harry next tested the tracking charm on the silver bracelet at Malfoy’s wrist. Still sound and secure.

“Everything is in order then?” probed Malfoy again, less acidic.

“Yes, everything’s fine,” nodded Harry.

“Well, Mister Potter, since you seem satisfied with your examination of my humble abode as well as that of my humbler self, perhaps would you like to trouble yourself with a bit of tea?”

Despite the unmistakable sarcasm, Malfoy gestured to a sumptuously laid out tea for two. 

Harry guessed the formerly worldly man simply couldn’t resist being a tad prideful at a high-ranking Ministry executive paying him a visit: Stanford, Malfoy’s thoroughly scrupulous parole officer, had never reported being treated that well.

“Actually, Mr. Malfoy, there is something I wanted to discuss. A glass of water will do, though. But thanks.”

A disdainful sneer formed on Malfoy’s face at Harry’s rebuff, but the older wizard still called for water. 

A tiny house-elf carrying a tray scurried into the room as Harry seated himself in an upholstered chair, matching the glass table with its spindly legs. Generations of arched features looked down upon him from opulent frames. A chubby angel on the painted ceiling frostily upturned its nose.

“I assume you wish to enquire about the whereabouts of our mutual friend,” said Malfoy without ado. “Well, I assure you I don’t have the faintest idea.”

Harry frowned. “Eh, no. I’m here because of the incident with your peacocks.”

Two days ago there had been an intrusion on the Malfoy estate. A truckload of gnomes were dumped into the gardens, and the peafowl within it charmed to poop on the manor’s windows. Right now the French door to Harry’s left was opaque with a grubby white substance. 

“But what do you mean? What mutual friend?” asked Harry, derailed. 

Harry’s question genuinely seemed to surprise Malfoy senior, who squinted at him appraisingly. “So you haven’t heard…” he mused before trailing off. 

Then, straightening himself, he gave a mannered toss of his hair that reminded Harry of the man he had known while a child, and replied, “Yes, a monstrous infestation was brought upon my ancestral lands, and dear animal companions of mine were subjected to extreme torture. A vicious act of terrorism that is doing irreversible damage to centuries old, inestimable architecture and heritage. I am pressing charges, of course.”

Harry refrained from rolling his eyes. Detained and crippled and still obnoxious. But, even if the consequences were absurd, the breach into a monitored site by unknown perpetrators was an actual concern that needed to be dealt with. 

Harry took a sip from his glass. “Yes, well, I’m here, Mr. Malfoy, to assure you that your security as a ward to the Ministry is important to the MLE’s office, and as such the perimeter defenses on your estate will be reinforced with daily patrols. The patrols will be randomly assigned, at various hours of the day, or night, so you shouldn’t be alarmed with unusual presence. The Aurors charged will be in uniform. Is that agreeable with you?”

“Do I have a choice?” Malfoy countered, the disdainful sneer returning to his face.

“Well, while I’d like for you to understand that the new measures are for your own security, which is why I came here today to tell you in person, I also trust that you know filing a formal complaint with the Convicts’ Welfare bureau is always an option.” The Malfoy’s Conditions of Detention file was thicker than that of all the other detainees in Great Britain, combined.

Malfoy dropped a cube of sugar into his tea with his pinky finger lifted.

“Be assured that I will if I find your henchmen to be disruptive of my quiet. A man has to look out for himself, what with my name being dragged through the mud quotidianly. Speaking of good names, whatever happened to Severus’ posthumous Order of Merlin? I heard rumors, but nothing ever came about.”

“Severus as in Severus Snape?” Harry asked, confused for a moment by the turn of the conversation. “There was resistance toward it on the award’s committee, still is. Not from me, complain as you may, I’m sure you know there’s a more resentful crowd,” he gestured toward the grimy French door with a slight movement of his head, “But why do you ask?”

“Oh, so you still hold the man in good esteem? I guess you did name one of your children for him after all,” replied Lucius.

“That is none of your business, but yes, I think he was a brave man. But again, why are you bringing him up now? Or at all? Snape’s been dead for twenty years, and I’ve never heard you spill a single tear over the matter before. Was it him you were talking about earlier?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps... What can I say, I must be in the throes of nostalgia…” Malfoy trailed off in a melodramatic drawl. He kept silent for a while, lightly tracing his index on the rim of his porcelain cup, before speaking in a firmer tone, as if he had come to a sudden decision, “He was a good and close friend, Severus. Please be assured of my support in restoring his reputation.”

Harry thought that Malfoy’s support could only be counterproductive if they ever were to clear the tragic potions master’s name officially. He refrained from saying so, however, and stirred the conversation back on track.

“Do you know anything about who may be behind the intrusion?” Harry asked.

“How would I know? Some envious riffraff, I expect. Looking to expunge the bitterness of their squalor by tarnishing the distinguished. It wouldn’t have been allowed to happen if the moats hadn’t been drained.”

Harry did not roll his eyes.

“Keeping hydras in captivity for defensive purposes is against the law.”

“It wasn’t when my great-great-grandfather brought them.”

“It is now. Mr. Malfoy, on the day of the intrusion, an unidentified individual was sighted prowling around the Manor. Do you recall anything about that?”

“Since your little gang decided it, you mean. I dread the day when owning house-elves will be deemed illegal. Where that would leave us? And sighted by whom? I wouldn’t know what you are talking about, but the terms of my pardon clearly stipulate that all means of surveillance against my person would be disclosed to me.”

“So you have spotted no one who shouldn’t have been there on that day? An individual who couldn’t be identified — presumably the perpetrator of the vandalism who has disabled our sneakospheres — was seen outside the room we are in at this very moment.”

“But this is a scandal! I have not been informed that I was spied upon as well! I, who am already tailed round-the-clock by plenty of debasing devices! The Prophet will hear about this!”

Harry wasn’t going to reveal the MLE’s foray into satellite imaging — a.k.a. Google Maps. It didn’t violate any of the specifications in Malfoy’s pardon.

“It was a chance sighting, Mr. Malfoy. With no Ministry involvement, I can assure you. Have you noticed anything unusual? We are simply trying to ensure your security.”

“You mean apart from the birds shitting on my windows? No. I have not. Be warned, Mr. Potter, that if I discover any irregularity in the handling of my detention, I will have your head for it.”

“Mr. Malfoy, as I’ve said, you are always welcome to formal complaints. The individual was dark-haired, wearing black. You remember nothing about that?”

Lucius paused at that, the angry flush on his face ebbing away while grey eyes nervously swept the parlor, as if expecting someone to jump from behind the curtains. His gaze then turned to Harry and searched his face for a moment longer, his pale finger now rapidly circling the rim of his cup, before the older man spoke again in a curt tone.

“No. I recall nothing.”

Harry couldn’t quite place the origin of Malfoy’s agitation.

“Are you sure?”

Malfoy considered his tea.

“Yes. Horace Slughorn is on the award’s committee now, is he not? A contribution toward his alumnae association would facilitate things, would it not? I’d like to do that.”

“The Merlin’s Award committee? For Snape?” asked Harry, frowning as he was derailed again.

“And I’m sure Ethan Parkin wouldn’t mind a donation to the Wigtown Wanderers. Regular sponsorship, I’m a big fan. Would you mind passing the word? Alas, I’m not as free to see to such things myself as I once was.”

“The award doesn’t work that way, Mr. Malfoy.”

A fully contemptuous sneer pointed Malfoy’s already pointy features then.

“Of course not, Mr. Potter.”

Having had about enough of the attitude, Harry was about to retort something not so entirely politically correct, when he was prevented from doing so by an insistent scratching sound.

The tiny house-elf Harry hadn’t noticed being still in the room sprang from a shadowed corner to open a high, adorned window. A worn ministry owl flew in, dropping an envelope into Harry’s lap as it unceremoniously made a landing in the assorted delicacies Malfoy had set out. The owl pecked at a dainty sandwich while Harry read the message.

> _We need to talk ASAP. Very urgent. Your office? H._

Mindful of his company, Harry repressed a groan as he took out a pen from his breast pocket to scrawl a curt reply on the back of the card.

> _It’s_ _late_ _and I’m busy. See you tomorrow. Your office. Harry_

Ever since Hermione’s nomination as Chief Witch of the Wizengamot in the recent reshuffle, everything had become “very urgent” or “extremely pressing” in her world, in a way that reminded him of the pre-exam stressed out Hermione of school days. He wasn’t surprised Ron was eating tofu. 

Harry was sure his hard-working best friend would achieve great things in her new function, another step up in a brilliant career that would predictably surpass his own, already peaked one, but he had to put his foot down before he got eaten whole.

Besides, he already had plans for the night, which involved a box wrapped with ribbons carefully stored away in a drawer of his bedroom. 

Dispatching the ministry owl with his reply, Harry turned to Malfoy who was observing him with an amused expression having appeared on his face. His annoyance must have shown. 

“Sorry about that. Ministry business,” he said, self-conscious. The discussion with Malfoy wasn’t going anywhere, anyway. “I think we’re done here. Unless you have more information about the people who intruded on your property?” 

“Oh, but don’t let me detain you, Mister Potter. I’m sure you are a very busy man,” said Malfoy, before adding with a smirk, “Or will be anyway.”

Still puzzling about what the pompous prat was getting at, Harry floo’d home.

Back at Grimmauld Place, it took him a good ten minutes of rummaging around the kitchen’s cooking island while whistling a cheerful tune, before he spotted the dark-haired silhouette gingerly seated at his dining table.

The plate with his sandwich clattered onto the floor.


	8. Harry Potter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to Divinityinmotion, Mitzvahmelting, and Aeternum for beta-reading! <3<3<3

This is a terrible idea, thought Severus as he spied Potter exit the kitchen’s hearth of 12 Grimmauld Place, to throw himself headfirst into the fridge.

The-Boy-Who-Lived, Savior Almighty, next coming of Merlin of the wizarding world, the person to whom he was about to, ahem, offer himself, was, at this very moment, squeezing ketchup on slices of cold turkey while conga’ing to his own, whistled rendition of a gaudy, muggle tune.

A terrible, terrible idea. 

Immune to Severus’ grave misgivings, Potter executed a pirouette whilst balancing a gherkin on the tip of his wand. 

The boy—man — was as short as he remembered, and not much more physically impressive. Upon closer audit, perhaps a few more pounds of musculature could be discerned under the faded green, corduroy jacket, and a few more ounces of fat could be observed where the pressed chino pinched at the waist, but overall he looked the same as the scrawny teenager who had defied him with tearful eyes by Hagrid’s hut a million years ago. Same mop of dark hair, same glasses.

The words “terrible” and “idea” continued to loop in Snape’s mind.

He still had time. He could back out now. Apparently age had no effect in terms of improving the boy’s — man’s — circumspection either. The door to the house had opened on the second knock, and Snape had walked right in — the curse intended for him by old Moody dispelled — to be offered hot beverage by the Black family’s house-elf. 

The sorry creature, who it appeared had become a full member of the household, was at this very moment fetching memorabilia it thought he may enjoy as “a friend of Master Regulus” — the younger Black who had navigated the rather snottier spheres of Lucius’ Slytherin circles, and with whom he had formally crossed paths the once: a pale, trembling figure on the day of his Marking. 

He would be angry at the casual carelessness on principle if he hadn’t expected as much. The one thing he had learned about Potter while watching him grow up was that the man — boy then — had no notion of common sense. A deviance of character of such magnitude it couldn’t even be surmised as typical Gryffindor pigheadedness: Severus long suspected some sort of brain damage from early trauma, additionally to a dubious ascendance on one side. It just so happened that said defect fitted Albus’ plans perfectly. 

Which is why, after a night of observation uncomfortably spent as a polyjuiced drunk on the sole bench of the small square facing the building invisible to Muggles, he had chosen to gain entrance from the front door while wearing no disguise to begin with. 

A door he could still flee through in the reverse direction with none the wiser since he has been in the house by himself for a full hour, and in Potter’s still unsuspecting company for at least five minutes. 

But to go where?

And there lay his dilemma. He was now sure the Pledge was breaking and collecting debt for service rendered, in the form of a gradual but inexorable descent upon his person of six decades’ worth of accumulated adverse effects from close association with dark dwellers. Plus interest for licence given in the manipulation of the arts. Amidst various physical ailments ranging from random seizures of tremors that made his teeth chatter, to the simple and unrelenting sense of exhaustion felt to his very bones, the most obvious and concerning evidence was the spot of Nagini’s bite: the curse that came with the venom had been unleashed and was rapidly spreading from the artery in his neck toward his heart, forming a visible, spider-web-like bruise under his skin in its progress. 

Even with daily doses of the most potent phylactic potion, he gave himself one week tops.

Of course, the noble and dignified thing to do would be to crawl under a rock and die; for the second time, and for good. But now that Voldemort was gone, he would be damned if he was going to be noble even a single time more in his life. As for dignified, the truth was he rather looked forward to Potter’s horror at his demand.

No, the logic was sound. It was only a matter of personal aversion toward the recipient of his suit, as well as wistfulness about losing his restful status amongst the deceased. The latter being presently wrought out of his control as Potter was finally turning in his direction.

Eyes rounded in shock stared at him. 

The moment their gaze met, Severus felt as if a tunnel through time and space had opened around him. A tunnel into his own mind, and into which he could only spiral helplessly. A tunnel into an unfinished story written on parchment with the ink yet to dry at the leave of the author’s quill. A tunnel onto rocky highlands where the air was sharp and crisp with the promises of untameable youth. A tunnel under water where the muted sounds of urban motions grasped at his hearing as childish laughters sang like crystal glasses clinking against each other, as the smell of summer and dried up grass tickled his nostrils, as sweet smiles and affectionate magic caressed him like vapour, and as the colour green embalmed him in its soft shroud. 

Green. Green eyes the colour of…

No. He wasn’t thinking about that. Not when he was about to ask what he was about to ask from Potter.

… But he was thinking about it. Green eyes the colour of…of…

And the spell was broken, as anything truly beautiful was to be, by the voice of sheer idiocy.


	9. Severus Snape

“Snape! You’re... you’re…  _ tan _ ?”

Harry wondered if he had just entered another dimension.

In his kitchen, at his dinner table, sipping what he assumed to be tea from one of his ceramic mugs, sat his former potions master. His  _ dead _ former potions master.

Or an alternate universe version of him, at least. A version that had bronze — near maroon — skin, mussed hair reaching past the shoulders, and who wore a bright, canary coloured shirt. 

Malfoy must have spiked the water with something, the bastard, Harry thought. He was hallucinating. His mind was making up stuff from the bizarre conversation they just had.

Without being able to resist it, Harry walked as if hypnotized until he was standing within arm's distance of the apparition. 

He raised a single finger and, in slow motion, poked at the head of whatever his eyes were making him see, once.

Ew, greasy. And that hooked nose? Unmistakable. 

Yup, it seemed Severus Snape was drinking tea in his kitchen.

Severus-fucking-Snape.

He felt dizzy. 

“But...but...how?”

The mouth of the versicolored shadow from the past moved, and a familiar, deep voice brimming with scorn came out of it.

“As eloquent as I remember. I assume you have verified I’m not transparent, and thus find yourself satisfied that I’m not, in fact, a ghost. Nor an inferi since you may notice that I am also endowed with speech.”

“What... wh —  _ how _ ?”

“What are ghosts? Or what are inferi? Well, ghosts, or ectoplasms, are the souls or spirits of dead persons or animals that can appear to the— “

“It can’t be. It can’t. We  _ buried _ you.”

“Oh yes, thank you for ignoring my will and the clearly stipulated wish for a plain Muggle burial. It made crawling out of my own tomb all the more difficult. Your wards almost had me die buried alive. But I guess respect for the preferences of the deceased was too much to expect from someone so arrogant as to…” 

The Snape-clone started droning insults in such a superbly contemptuous, and recognizable tone, that Harry felt as if he had been warped back to being a schoolboy in detention at Hogwarts. He had to shake himself physically to dispel the illusion.

“What will? We never found any. Besides, you can hardly reproach me — Wait, no! How are you alive? How’s that possible? I brought your body back from the Shrieking Shack. I held you — I  _ held your corpse in my arms _ !” 

The Snape look-alike paused and remained silent for a while, appearing to ponder whether to answer before he did so in a somewhat less antagonistic tone.

“A simple Draught of the Living Dead, Potter. With some tweaks, encapsulated in my tooth. It provided the appearance of death as my body was suspended in a state of low metabolic catatonia for the duration of a lunar cycle.”

“But… But you were wounded. I saw it, I was there. Nagini bit you. At your neck.”

“Yes, it helped with that too.” 

“ _ You bled to death _ !”

“I appeared too.”

“... No. The wound, it was too deep. You couldn’t have —”

“Fawkes took care of that. After you left the shack, he came to me. No one bothered with a close autopsy. I assume there was enough gore on my person to have everyone fooled. ”

The Snape-clone finished his sentence with a slight shrug of the shoulders and, seemingly satisfied that everything had been cleared up, resumed sipping tea. 

Harry tried searching his memories. It was so long ago, but it was true he hadn’t paid enough mind to carefully examine what he had thought to be Snape’s corpse when he had transported it from the Shack to the Great Hall, where all the others who had fallen lay. He had still been so tired and foggy from everything that happened then. And if he wasn’t mistaken, Snape’s body in his coffin did appear clear of any mark on the day of the burial, but he had thought that it was only the result of embalming. 

... So, it meant that it could actually be technically possible that… 

Sudden blistering rage seized Harry. All believable answers, he thought, but they were lies, could only be. And what kind of bloody prank was that? Impersonating a poor dead man. And what kind of mother-fucking fucker was playing it. 

“What’s the shape of Severus Snape’s patronus?” Harry questioned, hearing his teeth clink from clenching his jaw. 

“Too late for caution, don’t you think? The harm I could have done had I meant —”

Before he could think it, Harry’s wand was at the fraud’s temple, his other hand having seized a fistful of canary coloured shirt. The mug the Snape-lookalike was holding shattered at their feet, spraying the front of Harry’s leg with warm liquid. 

“Answer the question!” Harry snarled, shaking both his fists, “What did Severus Snape say to Albus Dumbledore when he used his patronus in front of him for the first time?”

The impersonator’s features instantly warped into an ugly grimace and Harry could feel a wand had been drawn, not quite pointed at him yet. 

Go on, let’s see what you’re made of, he thought. 

The face-to-face standstill between both of them lasted for a good minute, black eyes narrowed to a slit glowering at Harry, before the impersonator suddenly relaxed in Harry’s grip. It spoke in a curt, matter-of-fact voice that dripped with dislike. 

“A doe. And... always. Now release me. I’ve had enough morons manhandling me for a 48-hour period.”

Upon hearing the correct answer, Harry felt winded, as if punched in the stomach. Besides him, only Snape or Dumbledore could have known that. He hadn’t released that part of Snape’s memories to the public, so intimate had it felt, and it was at this very moment carefully stored away in a superlatively warded, personal safe upstairs he was sure no one had accessed. He let his arms fall to his sides.

“It really is you, isn’t it?” he asked.

The man that could only be Snape straightened his shirt.

“Yes,” was the answer.

“I need a drink,” replied Harry.

No doubt summoned by his whim, Kreacher appeared in the kitchen as Harry sat himself down.

The house-elf, who was holding a small pile of what looked like old letters and a tarnished Slytherin badge, plodded along while babbling jovially. 

“Ah, Master Potter is home. Kreacher didn’t expect Master Potter so early. We have a visitor, Master Potter. Master Potter remembers Mr. Snape, of course? Here, Mr. Snape. Master Regulus’ letters. They have Mr. Snape’s name in them. And this is Master Regulus’s school cloak’s brooch. Oh, did Mr. Snape break his cup? No matter, Kreacher will take care of it. We will have other refreshments served right away. Master Potter has smashed his plate! Very careless of Master Potter; Kreacher has to clean that or bad things could happen. Shall Kreacher prepare supper too? We have a kidney pie ready, and roast—”

“Wine please, Kreacher,” Harry interrupted the elf, and, glancing at the man seated opposite him, he added, “The one you make, the strong stuff, thanks.”

A few seconds later, a pitcher of pumpkin juice alongside two glasses of blood-red liquid and a bottle of the same had appeared on the table as the smell of home cooking filled the room. Harry drowned his glass in one gulp. 

Snape sat across him silently, his liquor untouched; looking at Harry in a very familiar, disapproving way. 

Still dizzied by the improbable visit, Harry cleared his throat.

“I don’t drink much, but I needed that.”

Silence stretched. Harry reassured himself that this was not a dream. His thumbnail did leave a red crescent on his index finger.

His visitor still didn’t speak, so Harry did.

“Um, so, um, Professor, you’re alive. How… How have you been?”

A downward moue of thin lips. “Perfectly fine until two days ago.” 

Ok, no small talk then. 

“Oh, yes, you said manhandled — Merlin! Were you attacked? That’s why you’re here, is it? Are you hurt?”

Snape seemed to hesitate.

“As a matter of fact, I am.”

“You are,” echoed Harry. 

Now that he was looking more closely, and with his head clearer, what he had taken for a deep suntan wasn’t only that. Snape’s complexion was darker than he ever remembered, but it was also marred with what looked like faded bruises from old or magical injuries. The disparate marks spanned his face, neck and hands, and he supposed the rest of Snape’s covered body wasn’t any better. From his training he could identify imprints of strangulation via ropes, already partially healed. The rest he wasn’t sure of. The man really looked the worse for wear. Even for a supposedly dead person who turned out to be alive, that is. In fact, if Snape told him right there that he was a zombie from the Caribbean, he would half believe him.

Harry felt a twinge of guilt at the way he had treated his former teacher. He also wondered what kind of dog’s life Snape had kept to end up like this. And what crisis was acute enough to have driven the skilled wizard to his house.

“So, um, perhaps you would like for me to request medical assistance?” Harry asked cautiously, “I know the head of St. Mungo’s. You do too, in fact. Penelope Clearwater, I could owl her. Or we could always call on Madam Pomfrey, she’s retired now, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind giving you a checkup. If you’d like something more discreet, that is. Unless you’d prefer I sent for Neville to see if Hannah could come round? She has replaced Madam Pomfrey at Hogwarts. I would do it myself, but I never was very talented with healing charms, as you must know. But I could try if you’d allow me, that is…” Harry trailed off, aware that he was rambling like Kreacher. 

His old potions master’s mere presence could still be unnerving, apparently. Especially after resurrecting from the dead and glaring at his glassware as if it were first-year students. Besides, with the moment of pure shock past, he wasn’t sure how to situate himself relative to the man anymore. Not after believing him to be dead for twenty years, and not after having seen those memories. Should he tell Snape he didn’t hate him anymore? Should they talk about Dumbledore? His mother? What? 

Snape rolling his eyes was strangely reassuring. A thought suddenly occurred to Harry. “Does anyone else know? That you’re alive, I mean. Should I be informing someone specific?”

Another upward motion of black pupils, and the man who had resuscitated to sit at his dining table deigned to speak.

“First, I am injured, not metamorphosed into a wretch who needs to be talked to like a simpleton. Second, no to all options, they won’t be of any help. Third, how presumptuous of you indeed to think that I would come to you first after retiring from... being away.”

Harry’s ears actually felt hot at that. Damn, the man could still be irritating. Snape clearly needed at least some form of medical attention, but was acting as if Harry was imposing upon him. “Okay,” he said, carefully controlled, “What do you want then? I mean, you’re in my house, so you must want something.” He rather doubted the man would pay him a visit out of nostalgia. Not looking like that, if at all.

Taking a deep breath, he softened his voice some more before adding, “I mean, I’d be glad to help, Professor. I’d like to, I do. If you told me who assaulted you —”

“You can start by doing away with the ‘professor’. Teaching idiots hasn’t been required of me for over two decades. And no, the identity of the person who attacked me is inconsequential to the matter at hand.”

Yeah, same winsome personality, Harry thought. He didn’t know if he felt more weirded out by Snape turning out alive, or by how predictably difficult the man still was.

“Right. Okay. Sir, then” said Harry as he tried for an encouraging smile, “Could you tell me, what is the matter at hand?” And, fully expecting some kind of ex-Death Eater-turned-spy related trouble and already thinking of options to open an investigation, he added for good measure, “Please, I’m listening.”

Snape narrowed his eyes at that and did a thing with his mouth that made him look like a caricature villain ready to unleash chaos unto the planet. Harry’s smile faltered.

“Well,  _ since you ask _ . And since there is no easy way to say it, I am here because I require you to…”

At that moment, a beeping sound from his Muggle cell-phone grabbed Harry’s attention. Retrieving his Nokia from his trousers’ pocket and looking at the message he just received, he glanced from the still talking Snape to his phone several times, before texting back to Anna that he couldn’t make it, really sorry, was she free Thursday? Then, putting the cell away, he looked back to Snape.

“Sorry about that. Got sidetracked for a second, there. I must have misheard, because I thought you just said you wanted me to have sex with you.”

At Snape’s expression, the joking smile died on Harry’s lips. 

The room was so silent, Harry thought he was hearing crickets.

Snape’s continued refusal to look anything but dead — haha — serious reduced Harry to spluttering again.

“Wh...Wh— _ What _ ?” 

Twenty minutes later, Snape had explained the whole thing to him, twice.

“What do you mean you’re a virgin and I need to have sex with you?” Harry asked blankly for the third time. 

Malfoy definitively spiked his drink and Snape was in on the joke because they were mean Death Eaters who did that sort of thing to innocent people for no reason. And George Weasley was in a corner somewhere, taping it all. 

“As much as I must admit I enjoy inducing a state of speechlessness in your person, this is getting tedious. Do try, Potter, to get the information I’m giving you past that thick skull of yours.”

The insult bounced right off said thick skull as it was currently trying to calculate how to get back at George for the elaborate prank. 

“This is a joke, is it?” Harry said. “Brilliant, ha-ha,” he added for the camera.

Snape only looked angrier.

“Potter, I am dying. In six days’ time, if you persist in refusing to remove your puritanical blinders, I will be dead. For good. And it would be your fault. But I surmise it is what you want, isn’t it? Free at last of the loathsome professor you hated at an age you had pimples on your face, because he gave you one too many detentions. No matter how much said loathed professor has sacrificed to help save your ungrateful li— ”

“Wow! Hold on there! I didn’t make you do that vow thing! Don’t try to put that on me!”

“It is a Pledge, Potter. A devotional pledge that demanded from me the ultimate libation of staying untouched against powers ample enough to fool the Dark Lord, which I undertook for  _ your benef _ —”

“Right. First off, it’s Voldemort, or Tom Riddle. The guy’s dead. You may as well use the name instead of sounding like a goddamned groupie,” Harry interjected, way beyond not sounding petulant, “Secondly, you didn’t do it for me. You did it for my mother. I saw your memories, remem —”

“Same difference.”

“— ber. Thirdly, why don’t you just, erm, you know, keep going with the untouched thing. You seemed to be managing just swell, what with turning out to be alive  _ when everybody thought you were dead _ . I don’t see why —”

And that was going too far. In one astoundingly fast movement, Snape had reached across the table to seize him by the scruff of his neck like a badly behaved kid and, pulling aside the collar of his shirt with his other hand, the former potions master dragged Harry’s face within an inch of a purplish, veiny bruise that seemed to spread from Snape’s neck to his torso.

“Does  _ that _ look like ‘ _ just swell _ ’ to you?  _ Tell me _ Potter, do you  _ enjoy _ watching me  _ beg you _ for a  _ pity fuck _ ?”

Snape smells like pineapple and campfire, Harry’s brain registered insanely, as the word “fuck” splattered half his face with spittle; and the next second a woman’s voice echoed into the room. 

“Harry? Harry, are you there? I’m coming through. You have to see this…” the voice said, as green fire blazing in the kitchen’s heart alighted the room in the same hue.

Upon hearing that voice, Harry felt himself flush from the root of his hair to his toes, as if he was doing something unfathomably dirty and about to be caught. 

“Not now Hermione!” he heard himself screech, before, without wand nor words, a vault door made of steel with a hundred locks on it appeared out of thin air to bar entry from the hearth, banging resoundingly as it dropped shut. At the same time, Snape was propelled backward by an invincible shield, falling heels over head onto the floor.

“Master Potter!” he heard Kreacher exclaim, as the elf hurried over to Snape. “You is hurting our visitor! Master Potter shouldn’t hurt Mr. Snape!”

Harry dropped into his own chair as he watched Kreacher help Snape up to his feet. To Harry’s astonishment, Snape let himself be helped and fussed over. 

“There, there, Mr. Snape,” Kreacher carried on, while shooting at Harry dirty looks that barely reached the top of the table, “Mr. Snape is injured. Kreacher is making soup for Mr. Snape. Poor Mr. Snape has suffered so much, just like brave Master Regulus. Bad Master Potter to be hurting Mr. Snape. Master Potter shan’t be hurting Mr. Snape anymore.”

Four minutes later, Snape, who still had strands of greasy hair sitting askew on the top of his head and who hadn’t spoken a single word, was primly lifting spoonfuls of butternut squash veloute to his mouth. 

Harry’s own serving of soup had been ladled into his plate from so high, it had splashed his glasses.

Great, Harry thought ruefully, he had given up a night of mindless sex to deal with a rebellious house-elf and a resuscitated but half-dead man who was propositioning him under threat of imminent death. Fantastic trade off.

Said half-dead person still didn’t speak nor look at him, and Harry didn’t know how to deal with that. He vividly remembered the occasions on which he had blown up in front of, or even simply been cheeky toward the harsh and bitter man as a teenager before. He had either been tossed clear out onto his rear or cursed into the next week, if points hadn’t been subtracted. 

The pointed silence made him more uncomfortable than all aforementioned occurrences, and it hammered home for Harry, perhaps for the first time since he found Snape in his kitchen, that the man seated across from him was real; really alive and seriously harmed enough to be asking for his help. Not some strange avatar, wisp of his imagination, of the larger than life ambiguous scarecrow of his youth that had morphed into an archnemesis, before revealing himself to be one of the most heart-rendingly tragic people he ever met. A man he couldn’t say he liked, even after having seen the memories. But a man who had devoted his soul to repair a single error, committed unwittingly. A man whose regret had been profound enough to change the course of History. A man who had loved deeply.

Snape must truly have no other options left, Harry thought. Well, he chastised himself instantly, the guy was asking him to perform a sexual rite to save his life, of course he was out of options. He must already have exhausted all other resources. And that bruise, it was obviously a curse from Nagini’s bite. One, he could tell just from his short exposure to its malevolent aura, he or anyone he knew wouldn’t be able to lift with ordinary means.

Harry, feeling guilt for the second time of the evening, sighed.

“Pro — Sir. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shout. Or do that,” he finally said. “It’s just a lot to take in, is all. If you’d just —”

Snape, who must have been waiting for the moment, didn’t let him go any further. Lifting his gaze from his plate to pierce Harry with tunnel-like black eyes, he said three words.

“You. Owe. Me.” 

And with that, Snape was back to ignoring Harry in favour of the butternut squash.

Harry’s temper threatened to flare once more, an argument ready on his lips at the loaded assertion, but even he could recognize how costly it must be for the prideful man to come to him at all. Snape was simply trying to save face. And doing a poor job of it. He would feel pity if the man wasn’t just so damn trying. Which was the desired effect, he supposed. How did Dumbledore do it?

“Sir,” he tried again after counting to ten under his breath. He weighed each of his next words carefully, while doing his best to channel his inner patient dad, “You said you have six days?”

“At best.”

“Okay. I understand that. And you say that if I do the, erm, other ritual, it would save you from dying?”

“Yes, if I alter the Pledge into a Bond during the deflowering.”

Harry didn’t even try not to cringe at the last word. It was spoken with such old-fashioned matter-of-factness he could believe Snape was truly a virgin. For the rest, he still wasn’t sure what the implications were, beside the obvious, though he suspected there was more to it than Snape was letting on, but it was pointless to start the entire cycle of argument again. 

“Okay. I guess I kinda see that too. But, it’s late and I’m sure that you are tired. So why don’t we let it rest for the night. And tomorrow, I’ll call on some friends to see how to proceed — I’m not saying no,” he added quickly before Snape could start again, “It’s just to check all the options. And then we can take it from there. Would that be ok with you, sir?”

Snape appeared to ponder for a moment.

“Granger. No Weasleys. Or anyone else. I demand absolute discretion. On this matter, and that of my return.”

“Well, it’s Granger-Weasley now so—” A scowl from Snape, “Right. Of course, sir.”

Both of them sat in silence after that; Snape finishing his soup and Harry reclining back, simply relieved the mind-bending discussion was over. He was so exhausted from just the hour of conversation with the former potions master that he was definitively grateful he didn’t have to deal with anything in the immediate. Not to mention he was totally at loss about how he felt.

He didn’t realize he was staring at Snape before the man called him out on it.

“If you are done gawping, I will be retiring to bed,” Snape said as he finished his plate. The man gingerly dabbed at the corner of his mouth with one of Harry’s patchwork napkins. And, tossing the table linen aside, stood up to exit the kitchen with, clutched in one hand, a leather briefcase Harry hadn’t noticed before.

Only, Snape didn’t go for the flight of stairs leading up to the hallway, but for the service staircase next to the boiler room that directly accessed the upper floors.

“Wait! Pr—Sir, sorry but, where are you going? The hall’s this way.”

“I’ll take the second room on the first floor,” Snape said casually, without glancing back.

Harry’s temper definitely flared at that.

“Look, Snape! You can’t just barge in here and decide you’ll stay for the night! This isn’t headquarters anymore! It’s my house and I have kids! Can’t you go to an inn or something? The Leaky’s gotta have rooms free!” 

Snape slowly turned his head and simply glared at him. Until Harry could feel the words “you”, “owe” and “me” imprint themselves behind his eyeballs.

“Fine!” Harry snapped, “But you take my room, I’m not letting you into my kids’. Kreacher! Please escort our visitor to my bedroom. I’ll be sleeping in James’!” 

As Kreacher happily plodded over to Snape, Harry thought, still seething, that that was Severus Snape alright: the only person who’d have the gall to turn up at his house after being dead for twenty years and basically beg him to save his life by asking an immense favor out of him, but still act as if it was Harry who was at fault somehow.

With one foot on the first step of the next landing, said Severus Snape turned a last time to smile thinly down at him. 

“Good night, Potter,” said Snape, in a sweet, honeyed, terrifying voice. 

Feeling goosebumps rise all over him, Harry, selfishly and for the sake of his sanity, prayed that, despite evidence to the contrary, when he woke up tomorrow, he’d realise it was all a very weird dream and Snape would be gone.

  
  
  



	10. The Pledge and The Bond

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter this week.
> 
> And as always, thanks to my wonderful betas!

The moment the old house-elf closed the door of Potter’s bedroom behind him, Severus sagged down to the bed and let himself breathe in jagged, great gulps of air. 

With the tightly wrought control he had over his body relaxed, tremors overtook him while small fits of agonizing contractions chewed into his muscles all over. 

For a few minutes he just let the seizure run its course, and it felt like a reprieve, but as it didn’t stop, he resumed counting his breaths as he had done since being knocked over by Potter. 

The simple defensive spell, from the other wizard’s admittedly impressive wandless magic, had blasted through and past him as if he were a porous piece of fabric, setting the discomforts he already felt aflame. 

The pain from the cramps was bearable — it was the trembling that had him concerned. He knew that his nervous system was being damaged, whether from the Pledge breaking in itself or from the oversensitivity to external magic that resulted from it. 

And it was happening at an accelerating pace. 

Reigning in his body again with his eyes closed, he summoned from his briefcase a stout flask containing a golden, syrupy liquid — the same precious elixir he had used on Albus — and drowned the lot. Now he was in a secure location, he needn’t ration it. He would brew more tomorrow along with the other preparations. 

As the potion crept through his veins, Severus felt his limbs steady. Sighing in relief, he retrieved and drank a pain-numbing draught for good measure. He longingly considered the concoctions he had for sleep, but decided against it. 

It had gone largely better than he had anticipated. Potter had shown a sickening willingness to help when he wasn’t roused. And the guilt angle was a good idea; he felt confident The-Now-Man-With-A-Savior-Complex would come around with minimal work — whether the life debt was acknowledged or not. But knocking himself out was out of the question while the matter was still undecided.

In fact, he could faintly hear a commotion from downstairs right now. 

With great effort, Severus muttered “ _ Excercio Speculator”  _ while concentrating on the image of the Black house-elf in his mind, and the sound of insistent knocking rapped at his eardrums.

“Master Potter, should I get the door?” Severus heard Kreacher ask. The elf’s voice boomed closely, as if it were emitted from the area of his own mouth.

“No, I’ll deal with it. Thanks, Kreacher.” Potter’s voice, from his left, then receding footsteps with faint echoes of “Ha…ee...Ha...ee...s ha...ning...en the door” in the distance.

Muted clicking sounds, then a garbage truck’s roaring becoming louder in the background, overtaken by a woman’s voice: “Harry, there you are! We were worried sick!”

“I wasn’t, but she insisted. Hi there, Harry. Told you he was fine.” A man’s voice.

“Shush! Keep it down, guys!” Potter.

“Wh—what’s happening, Harry? Are you alright? I thought I saw someone with you when I tried to floo in earlier. You were fighting!” The woman in a hushed voice.

“Yeah, what’s happening Harry?” The man in the same hushed tone.

“Nothing! Well…” a sigh from Potter, and sounding defeated. “You may as well come in. But keep it down alright! I’ve got… a visitor.”

“A visitor?” 

“Shhh! Ron, told you to keep it down! Come in. Come in. Quietly.” Potter, reprimanding his tag-along, pet Weasley.

A door being closed shut. Footsteps coming closer.

“It’s Snape, isn’t it!” The woman who could only be Granger said in a hushed and hurried voice.

“Not in here Hermione!  _ Mufflatio. _ ” Potter, using a spell of Severus’ own invention. Off course.

Potter and his friend’s voices were distorted and muted for a few seconds, before they became clearer again as they re-entered Kreacher’s direct range of hearing.

“—old you Ron! See! I was right!” Granger, in a screeching voice that made him itch to deduct points.

“What’re the chances?” Ronald Weasley, sounding as thick as a brick. “Hi there, Kreacher.”

“Mr. Weasley. Mrs. Granger-Weasley, always a pleasure. We have many guests today. Should Kreacher serve nightcaps?”

“Yeah, whatever Kreacher, thanks. How could you possibly know? The guy just turned up in here an hour ago.” Potter, as dumbly as Weasley.

“I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all afternoon! Have you still not seen it?” Granger.

“Seen what? I’ve been pretty busy Hermione, what with work and, let’s see — oh yeah, Severus Snape turning up alive in my kitchen!”

“The headline, Harry! It’s from a Vietnamese newspaper, it has Snape’s picture on it! Here!” Granger. There goes nothing.

“Wow, wait! That’s Snape! Is he alive for real? That’s definitely him, isn’t it? ... And he’s with... another bloke? And... And he’s a prostitute?” Weasley.

“Yeah, the guy’s upstairs in my bedroom — what do you mean _a_ _prostitute_?” Potter.

“You’ve got a prostitute, who’s also Snape, in your bedroom? Told you we shouldn’t have come. What Harry does in his spare time isn’t any of our — ” Weasley.

“ _What do you mean_ _a prostitute_?” Potter.

“It says right there, look.” Weasley.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! I expect that’s just journalistic nonsense. Or a mistake. It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s just because of the shirt he wears! If you look closely, Snape’s shirt in the picture has chicken motifs on it. And in Chinese, ‘chicken’ means prostitute; it’s well-known slang all over Asia. Don’t you remember what the guide told us before we went to the bar on our vacation in Bali? Don’t you remember anything ever Ronald Weasley?” Granger. As insufferably know-it-all as he remembered.

“I dunno, must have been distracted by my beautiful wife wearing only a sarong over her bikini. The purple one, if I recall correctly. Set your eyes off perfectly. Not to mention your  _ décolletage.. _ .” Weasley. Oh god, even Granger must have higher standards .

“Oh, Ron, that’s so sweet of you. Hadn’t worn it for —” ...

“Guys! Snape, alive, focus please? So, at least that explains the tan, the guy’s been in the tropics. Are you sure your translation spell is right, though? This is from yesterday morning and he looks fine. Of course it could have been taken before, but it’d mean with the time difference that —” Potter.

“So Snape’s really alive? And he’s really in your bedroom? Why?” Weasley.

“Why what? He was in here when I came home, sitting right in your spot. Told me that... that he was injured. I couldn’t kick him out, could I? He’s really badly hurt!” Potter. How generous.

“What happened to him? Did Death Eaters track him down? Is that it? We still have Mulciber and Lestrange on the loose, and they could have seen the headline.” Granger. Yes, insufferable.

“I dunno, he wouldn’t tell me. He... he just said that... that he was hurt and needed my help with something.” Potter.

“With what?” Weasley.

“... Well, I wanted to see Hermione about it anyway, but Ron, you can’t tell him I told you, alright?” Potter. Predictable.

“Yeah, because I was always his favorite, and I’m gonna tell on you as soon as you turn your back.”

“It’s not that. It’s just that it’s... private. Maybe… Maybe you should go home, Ron. So I can discuss it with Hermione. He asked me not to tell you, specifically. Can you go home, please?” Potter.

“Wow, hold on there. He told you telling Hermione was okay but not me? You’re not plotting anything with my wife that involves that greasy git without me present!” Weasley. Tsk.

“Ron! Honestly! I’m perfectly capable of —”

“No, Hermione! We don’t know what the bloke wants! He turns up at Harry’s after, what, twenty years? And wants your help for some secret ploy? How do you know you can even trust him? Remember what he did to George? And he’s supposed to be dead!”

“… Ron’s got a point there, Harry.” Granger.

“Look, Ron, that’s really not the issue here. I trust Snape, I do. So — ” Potter. 

“What’s the issue then? Tell me too, or I’m going to the Prophet with the story of Snape in your bedroom.” Weasley.

“... Right, you asked for it. He asked me to have sex with him.” Potter. Tsk tsk.

“ _ What? _ ” Both Granger and Weasley.

“And you wanted to discuss  _ that _ with my  _ wife _ ? Let’s go home Herm —” 

“It’s not… It’s not like that! Snape’s dying alright! He said that he took a pledge to stay… stay chaste. And that the pledge was breaking. So he wants me to have sex with him, so he can transfer, or transform, whatever, the pledge into a bond to me, in a kind of ritual. He said that it would stop the broken pledge from killing him. He agreed I could discuss it with Hermione to see if there was any other way. That’s what I wanted to see Hermione for. Hermione, do you know anything about that? Because Merlin knows the whole thing’s got me.” Potter. A.k.a. Britain’s Security Tsar or the Chosen One.

“... That’s the biggest load of codswallop I’ve ev— ” Weasley.

“Snape pledged himself to a Chastity Covenant, of course! How could I not have guessed that!” Granger. May need a reminder that thinking about the sexual character one’s teacher is the definition of depravity.

“What cove—” Weasley.

“A  _ Chastity Covenant _ . It’s an ancient devotional pledge — ” Granger.

“Yeah, he said that,” Potter.

“ — that the Vestals, a kind of high priest or priestess in ancient times, took when they entered their functions. It required them to stay virgins and only dedicate themselves to the service of higher powers in exchange of being granted protection and enhanced abilities, especially against the Dark. Don’t you see, that’s how Snape did it! That’s how he managed to trick Voldemort during the war!” Granger.

“Snape’s a virgin?” Weasley. Also predictable.

“Well, something’s wrong about that, apparently. The Pledge, or Covenant, or whatever, it’s crumbling on him. All the old curses he was protected from are getting to him now. I saw it. And he says he’s going to be dead in six days if — ” Potter.

“That would be the aftershock or retribution. If a Chastity Covenant is reneged upon, then the person who took the Pledge would incur penance proportionally to the privileges granted, which can lead to the death of the pledger.”

“... Wait a minute, that doesn’t make any sense. He asked me to… to take his virginity. Assuming he’s not lying, how can the Pledge be breaking on him if he is still, you know, a virgin?” Potter. Catching up at last, aren’t we?

“Did he? For real? Are we discussing Snape’s being a virgin for real?” Weasley.

“Well, I’m not sure about that, but it’s possible the Covenant is rejecting him because of the headline here.” Granger.

“How come?” Potter. 

“You see, the Chastity Covenant is old and intricate magic. The Vestals who pledged themselves to it were dignitaries subjected to  _ fama,  _ or public reputation. If their chastity was cast into doubt by sufficient people on the city’s forum, they’d be repudiated from the Covenant, losing all their powers and status. So I think it’s technically possible that Snape is no longer accepted by the Covenant because of how many people saw that picture of him and  _ actively think _ that he is ‘impure’, so to speak. But without him having done anything to defile the pledge himself.” Granger. Not an education entirely wasted.

“You sure ’bout that? Because that looks pretty  _ defiling _ right there. I mean, that other bloke’s hand practically down Snape’s pants.” Weasley. The genteel third of the abominable trio.

“Ron!” Both Granger and Potter.

“… Yeah, I guess I see it. He could only have been blindsided by that headline. Making his Pledge to break. But then, wouldn’t that mean that all Snape’s got to do to save himself, is to go somewhere no one has seen it?” Potter. Who, to be fair, had his share of scoundrel reporting.

“That wouldn’t work, would it? Even if such a place existed, you’re telling me that the Covenant is already rejecting him, and once it’s done, it’s done. A spell undone can only—” Granger.

“ — be re-spun.” Potter and Granger.

“Why doesn’t he retake it then? The pledge thing, I mean.” Weasley.

“Because he’s already been rejected by the Covenant. It’s a catch-22.” Potter. Who’d understand neither Yossarian nor Orr.

“Yes, that.” Granger.

“What’s a catch twenty-two?” Weasley.

“That’d be an expression from a muggle novel. It’s a kind of paradoxical situation, like… you remember when during Voldemort’s coup, only purebloods were considered wizards, and non-purebloods caught with wands had to prove they were wizards? It’s like that.” Granger. Adequate.

“Uh, Ok. I think I unders— ” Weasley. You bet.

“Well, that’s actually a relief to hear. I thought... I thought he might have been sexually assaulted.” Potter. As nosy as ever.

“ _ What _ !” Both Granger and Weasley.

“Shhh! Keep it down! Yeah, he showed up here pretty battered with that story about the Pledge and stuff. But I guess not. What Hermione said made much more sense. Especially since he asked me to... do that.” Potter.

“Yeah, about that — and I’m not saying I’ve accepted Snape’s a virgin, or that he’s alive for that matter, yet — but how’s Harry doing it with Snape gonna solve anything?” Weasley.

“It’s not just about ‘doing it’. He asked Harry if he could contract a Faultless Bond with him, didn’t he?” Granger.

“I guess so, yeah.” Potter.

“So? What does it mean?” Weasley.

“Well, it’s logical really. Vestals who wished to terminate their service, and enter married life without incurring penance from breaking the Pledge, could do so by contracting a Faultless Bond with their spouse of choice.” Granger.

“Snape wants Harry to  _ marry him _ ?” Weasley. What a preposterous idea.

“No, nothing like that. It’s not a civil contract. It’s a private one. And a pretty one-side one, too. It just means that Snape will pledge himself to Harry instead of unnamed higher powers. In both cases the catalyst of the magic remain’s Snape’s devotion, preserving the properties of the magical contract affecting him, but in a way that circumvents the Chastity Covenant’s limitations.” Granger. Three syllables words — aim lower.

“Snape wants to  _ worship Harry like a god _ ?” Weasley. He wishes.

“Honestly, Ron! No. It’s more like taking advantage of a loophole in the Covenant’s terms of service. Snape’s allowed to stop being chaste, as long as he enters a Faultless Bond with someone who’s willing. And if he does that, the Covenant can’t pay retribution for being defaulted on, whether or not it considers Snape ‘impure’.” Granger.

“Like how a Keeper can’t catch the snitch, unless both Seekers are declared dead?” Weasley. Yes, exactly like that. And like how imbeciles can’t have a brain unless the moon is blue.

“... Er, something like that, yes.” Granger.

“But why Harry then? Why doesn’t Snape go and find himself someone who actually likes him to do the Faultless Bond thing with? Or anyone else for that matter.” Weasley.

“Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that too.” Potter, adamantly.

“Aren’t any of you following? The Faulted Bond allows him to avoid retribution from breaking his pledge to the Chastity Covenant, but it doesn’t mean that he’ll keep the advantages he had from the Covenant that’s already rejected him. In Snape’s case, I’m sure it means a lot of punishment from Voldemort he endured without liability caving onto him at once. He needs another pledge of equal potency to pick up the slack, so to speak. And that’s why Harry makes sense for a bond-mate, that way he can borrow Harry’s magical aura to protect himself.” Granger, clearly avoiding to state plainly the obvious factor that Potter is a powerful wizard. The most powerful one any of them knew.

“Snape wants to _feed on Harry’s magic_ _like a vampire_?” Weasley. If only.

“Does he?” Potter, in a squeak.

“Not Harry’s magic. Harry’s  _ magical aura _ . The Chastity Covenant imbues people who pledge themselves to it — Oh, forget it! See, when he was pledged to the Covenant, it was as if Snape was standing under an umbrella held by higher powers. When, or if, Snape contracts himself to the Faultless Bond with Harry, it will be as if he was standing under an umbrella held by Harry. An umbrella that Harry is already holding, whether or not Snape stands under it.” Granger.

“And since Harry’s umbrella’s pretty good against the Dark Arts, especially Voldemort’s kind, Harry is a perfect pick.” Weasley.

“Finally.” Granger. Agreed.

“But won’t that mean if Harry dies, Snape dies too? Why would anyone want that?” Weasley.

“... I think, yes. He won’t be able to contract another Bond as virginity is a requirement for the one who seeks it. But I can’t think anything else that’d work in his situation.” Granger. Agreed, again.

“But then couldn’t Snape just do the bond thing, without Harry doing him?” Weasley. If only, again.

“Nope. That’s the only requirement from Harry. To, ahem, seal the deal of the Bond.” Granger.

“So, no downside in the deal for Harry? Apart from the obvious, I mean.” Weasley.

“None. I don’t think so. The reverse, actually. Snape would be the one contracting the Bond, not Harry.” Granger.

“What do you mean the reverse?” Potter.

“... Well… He’d have to keep you happy and healthy by any means necessary, won’t he? What, with his life depending on yours.” Granger, euphemistic. The Faultless Bond, whilst not dark magic, is equally, if not more, compelling than the Dark Mark as it would require him to regard Potter’s life as his own. In contrast, the Dark Mark was of a coarser sort: a pavlovian device that constantly reminded its bearers of their Lord’s might, through the pain it could inflict at a distance. But the less Potter knew about that, the better. 

“So Snape’s gonna become Harry’s house-elf, and all Harry has to do is to boink the git once?” Weasley. Enchanting.

“Ron!” Potter and Granger.

“Well, that’s it, isn’t it? I say do it, the bloke’s vicious. Just close your eyes and take one for England, and he’ll be your pet ex-Death Eater forever. Bet he’ll do wonders to scare paparazzi away — Ow!” Weasley.

“Harry’s not going to take advantage of the Bond! And Snape knows it. That’s why he chose Harry too, I think.” Granger. Point.

“... Do you know any other way that can prevent him from dying?” Potter. 

“... If you say he is pledged to the Covenant, and it’s breaking, no. No, I can’t think of anything right now. But I can look it up.” Granger. Yes, please.

“We’ve got six days.” Potter.

“Oh, is that lavender milk? Looks delightful. Thank you, Kreacher. That’s not a lot of time, Harry. I can ask Collins in the archive department to draw up everything he has on Chastity Covenant tomorrow.” Granger.

“He asked for absolute discretion. Thanks, Kreacher.” Potter. And how well that went. And will go. 

“No making omelettes without breaking eggs. I can’t very well spend all day in the archives myself. Besides, it’ll take way longer.” Granger. There.

“Thanks, Kreacher. Harry?” Ron.

“Do what you can then, Hermione. I wouldn’t even know where to look — What, Ron?” 

“Why do Kreacher’s ears have glowing blue dots on them?” 

“What is Mr. Weasley talking about?”

“Wha — Oh, for fuck’s sake!  _ Finite Incantatem. _ ”

Five seconds after his spying spell was finally discovered, a silver, translucent stag had made its way into Potter’s room to stand erect before Severus. It gave a cant of its antlers as it spoke in Potter’s rather peeved voice.

“Snape! Don’t spy on me in my own house ever again! You can join us, you know. We are discussing how to save  _ your _ life, after all.”

Severus merely dispelled the stag with a flick of his wand and produced a patronus of his own. He sent it to Potter and his friends, carrying with it a list of potion ingredients and other materials he required, with a reminder that he had demanded absolute discretion, if you please. 

After that, since it was pointless to attempt eavesdropping again, Severus changed into his nightgown and, extinguishing the lights, made himself comfortable in Potter’s bed. 

The sheets had been changed by the Blacks’ house-elf so it felt clean enough, but no longer habituated to duvets and other bed accessories, he pushed most of them aside. Keeping only the pillows for his head and the bedspread to cover himself with and, ignoring the sense of dread at having rejoined a world he had left behind by choice, the familiarity of which was enough to make him nauseous, he resolutely closed his eyes. 

He was dozing in and out of sleep, tired but affected by jet lag on top of his condition, when he heard the faint creaking sound.

He immediately feigned the deep breathing of solid rest, his wand securely gripped under the pillow, and observed through his lashes the door open as if moving of its own volition. 

Light indentations in the shape of feet, visible by the moonlight cast from the windows, drew themselves in the plush carpet and slowly neared the bed in which he lay. The bed linens he had pushed onto the floor were flattened as Potter, under his invisibility cloak, came to stand by the bedpost. 

He could hear the scant disturbance of air as he felt an ordinary diagnosis spell being cast over him. He was surprised, however, by the longer, muttered incantation that followed. It was a druidic safeguarding charm, the sophistication of which he hadn’t expected from Potter. Off the mark by a long-shot as no common magic could truly alleviate his afflictions, but it still somewhat improved his comfort by bathing him in a kind of warm, benign glow.

Potter left, as invisible as he had come. And Severus gave himself up to true slumber.


	11. The Deflowering

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to my wonderful beta Aeternum.

Feeling rough after a brief night of agitated sleep, Harry, who was still in a pair of James’ checkered pajamas, finished up his coffee at the kitchen sink.

He watched Kreacher pour fluffy yet gluey scrambled eggs onto a large plate which was already stacked with sausages, baked greens, and fried tomatoes. 

“Why didn’t I get any of that?” Harry asked.

“Master Potter always rushes through breakfast when the youngsters aren’t home,” the house-elf answered in a breezy voice, whilst he topped the dish with freshly made waffles in the shape of oblong shields. They had the Black family motto “Toujours Pur” impressed on their surfaces.

“Kreacher can make more once Kreacher has attended to Mr. Snape. Would Master Potter like that?”

Harry glanced at his battered plastic watch. “Yeah, sure. For tomorrow, thanks. So, he is up?”

“Mr. Snape? Yes, he has asked us for our largest cauldron. Kreacher is bringing him Master Sirius’ old one after serving breakfast.”

“Cauldron?”

“Yes, it’s the best one we have.”

“... Are you taking the food to him now? Why don’t I come with you?”

“Of course, Master Potter. If Master Potter would like to help with the grapefruit juice.”

Snape, who hadn’t seen fit to vanish during the night, stood in the middle of his bedroom. Wrapped in a heavy bathrobe Harry recognized as being from the collection of ancient clothes Kreacher had refused to throw out.

He was barefoot, with his hair still wet from — presumably — a shower, and he was unpacking vials and jars from his old leather briefcase, into Harry’s dresser and shelf. 

The disparate containers that flew out of the obviously charmed hand luggage were sorting themselves in mid-air by lining up in neat rows of similar heights, before floating to their new designated spots — displacing Harry’s effects as they did and dumping them into a growing heap in a corner of the room. 

“What _the hell_ do you think you’re doing, Snape?”

“Master Potter! Master Potter is not shouting this early in the morning,” exclaimed Kreacher. “Mr. Snape, Kreacher made waffles the proper way. Kreacher thought Mr. Snape may appreciate them. Did Mr. Snape find the water warm enough?”

“Yes. Thank you. Do you think you will be able to obtain what I inquired for?” Snape addressed the elf without acknowledging Harry’s presence.

“Of course, Mr. Snape. Kreacher will be right back with Master Sirius’ school cauldron. I’m sure Mr. Snape will be pleased. It’s as good as new.”

“Thank you, Kreacher, much obliged.”

“Sna—!”

“Potter, I’m simply making temporary arrangements so that I can concoct the philter my life depends upon at the moment,” Snape declared impetuously, as he deign to turn his hooked profile to glance over his shoulder. “Have you seen to my requirements?”

“Ron’s got the list. He’ll make a run to Slug and Jiggers this morning. Look, Snape, I appreciate that y—”

“Ah, so I am to expect second grade ingredients as well as incompetence in their gathering, on top of the breach of my confidence. Please, at least make sure that the bat spleens are fresh when they are delivered to me. I’ll need everything presently.”

Harry stopped himself before he could lash out with the retort that came readily. “I’m not doing this now. I’m late,” he said instead. “I’ll be back at lunchtime. Then _we talk_.”

He made for the pile of his belongings and retrieved a fresh pair of socks and underwear. He was still hovering over the heap, digging into it with his wand in great irked jabs, when something poked him in the head.

“Were you looking for this?” asked Snape, in an innocent tone as Harry grabbed the black box wrapped in pink ribbons that Snape had levitated toward him.

“Do not worry, Potter, your naughty secrets are safe with me,” Snape drawled, with a nasty smirk.

Harry, clutching tightly the box of purchases he had made for Anna under his arm, exited his own bedroom with his face red, muttering expletives under his breath.

Back in James’ room, his mental mantra had morphed into, “Worked for Albus. Loved my mom. Gryffindor’s sword. Wand tricked Voldy,” as he changed into a pair of his eldest sons’ jeans that were too tight at the waist. He was still reciting the mantra when he made his way back to the kitchen’s hearth, the only fireplace in the house connected to the floo network, and grabbed a fistful of powder to commute to his office.

The morning at the Ministry flew by with Harry not being able to concentrate on anything he had planned to do. He made quick work of signing the various reports from the night before, noting that no breach of the International Travel Convention had been signalled — meaning that Snape had either used an unauthorized portkey to re-enter the UK, or travelled by muggle means, the latter being unlikely given the date of the headline. It also suggested that his assailants couldn’t have followed him directly, unless Snape was attacked upon entry on British soil, which worried Harry.

After his habitual informal briefing-slash-coffee break with his staff, from which he excused himself quickly on the grounds of the backlog waiting for him on his desk, he went to draw up Snape’s file from the classified repository.

The leather-bound folder was frayed, dating back to Voldemort’s first rising, and the first page was stamped across with large, red letters spelling out “DECEASED”. Harry thumbed through the abstracts of Snape’s arrest, subsequent trial and release, verifying that nothing new had been added to the content he already knew from having read it when he was promoted to Head Auror. He reached the last page he, himself, had redacted. It was a brief addendum already yellow with age that read as follow:

> _Severus Snape, member of the Order of the Phoenix, acted on Albus Dumbledore’s order to infiltrate the Death Eaters’ ranks. Killed in action during the Battle of Hogwarts by Voldemort’s hand, he was buried with his wand in West Sheffield Cemetery, near Spinner’s End. With no known relatives left, his estate registered under the name of Severus Prince-Snape in the muggle Civil Registry were donated to the Hogwarts Foundation for Gifted Children._ _The empty vault found at Gringrott under his name was returned to goblin administration._
> 
> _Severus Snape has been proposed as a candidate for a posthumous Order of Merlin First Class Award by Harry James Potter._

Great, Harry thought, for the time being, and with Snape still officially dead, there was no arranging a safe-house for him without cutting through an amount of red tape that even he would have a hard time explaining to Internal Affairs. At least he, himself, wasn’t technically committing a crime since Snape wasn’t recorded as a felon at the time of his supposed death, and there were no stipulated laws against hosting the deceased that weren’t of the reincarnated, undead or spirit variety.

Hoping that the resuscitated shady war-hero and outright prick wouldn’t die in his house for the second time, leaving him to organize some sort of clandestine, moonlight re-burial, he made a copy of the addendum at a nearby Dupli-Chest, adding a short handwritten memo to it.

> _It’s been 20 years, can’t we notch this one along already?_

Folding both into a paper plane, he sent the origami flying directly to Shacklebolt’s office with a slight howler charm attached to it.

After that, and since the cross-reference search for potential enemies was threatening to empty the whole of the high-profile section onto the consultation bench — with Harry’s own file included in the lot — Harry locked up the repository room, and handed back the key to the horned gargoyle who swiftly swallowed it, belching a puff of yellow smoke.

Checking both sides of the torch-lit corridor to make sure no one could see him, he squeezed himself between a man-sized philodendron and an empty tract rack, and, bypassing his own security system, he disapparated with a faint pop.

Snape’s tombstone was a rectangular slab of granite specked black and white; it bore only name and dates, with the words “Brave and True” underneath. Next to it was the white marble of Eileen Prince-Snape — “Hide not your talents, they for use were made, What’s a sundial in the shade.”

The spray of a dozen lilies Harry had left beneath Snape’s when Albus Severus was born had dulled despite the Evergreen charm. They still stood out amidst the dense burial plots of the dilapidated urban cemetery.

Scrutinizing them for the first time since he cast them at age seventeen, he found that his subterranean wards had been busted. Precisely taken apart a long time ago, in a way that hadn't triggered the alarm, and leaving only remnants of the spells that wouldn’t obstruct physical disturbance behind.

If the doe patronus wasn’t proof enough, that was.

Harry didn’t bother to confirm whether the coffin was empty and went to look for Hermione.

He bumped into his best friend as he was exiting the Ministry lift at level 2, and as she was getting into it.

“Harry! I was looking for you,” exclaimed Hermione.

“Right. About my guest? Your office?” asked Harry.

“Yours. Mine’s still crowded with the Goblins’ Rights Committee.”

They didn’t talk further as they pushed through the heavy oak doors of the Aurors Section, and walked past the rows of individual cubicles, until the thick door — next to that of the Head Auror’s office — leading to a stately room, with four large fake windows and a larger mahogany desk, slammed firmly shut behind them. 

Hermione swatted aside a flock of airborne memos to seat herself in the chair facing the desk. She plunked a slim, purple binder on top of Harry’s already messy writing surface, and began without ado.

“That’s all the archive has on the Chastity Covenant. There isn’t much more to it than we already discussed: it’s mostly older records of witches and wizards born into pureblood families who claimed having taken the pledge so they could get out of arranged marriages.” She clicked her tongue, evidently miffed by the poor results, “And I’ve also looked it up on the MagWebCat, no reference that I didn’t already know of came up.”

Harry half-leaned himself against his desk, beside Hermione, and picked up the binder, flipping through it. 

“So, there is no other way to prevent him from dying?” he asked, slowly.

“Not that I’ve found out about,” she answered, before asking in an urgent tone, “But Harry, are you sure Snape’s not lying to you?”

“No,” Harry stated. “I ran a diagnosis spell on him last night. There was so much wrong with him, it just came back with ‘critical, transport to emergency ward immediately’. And his neck — he has a curse bruise there; where he was bitten, remember? — it was worse when I saw him this morning. The thing was inflamed and near black. I don’t even know how he’s standing upright. Besides, why would he lie about that? He is not the type.”

“Yeah,” nodded Hermione, “I’ve discussed it with Ron. He thinks unless Snape’s under Imperius from someone who wants blackmail material, he’s the way he claims. Wouldn’t it be better if he was at St Mungo’s?”

“That’s the first thing I asked him. He point-blank refused, and I doubt insisting would change his mind. And honestly, I don’t think it’d be that helpful. There is no apparent physical injury. And as for the Imperius — even if he’s been imperio’d, he’s still dying.”

“So, you’re going to do it?”

Hermione didn’t look surprised as she dropped the blunt question, but she worried at her bottom lips.

For a moment, Harry peered at a lighter rectangle on his office’s white walls — where a photo of Ginny in her Holyhead Harpies jersey, holding the silver Leagues Cup, had hung.

With the outright shock and disbelief of last night a little behind, he tried to imagine what he would do if he was still married.

Putting aside the even more awkward circumstances, the answer that came readily was that he’d save Severus Snape’s life. 

He’d save the lives of any and all of those who had died if he was given the chance. Especially if all he had to do was as trivial as getting his prick wet. He’d fuck Sirius. He’d fuck Remus. He’d fuck Dumbledore if it’d mean it could save them. He’d fuck Tonks, Fred, Dobby, Cedric, Mad-Eye and so many others.

He’d even fuck his mum and dad. Though he was sure that would perturb some fundamental laws of the universe, on top of taking the Muggle saying “make love not war” a little too literally.

Images of death and devastation from another time — Snape’s time — cluttered the front of Harry mind. They were quite vivid. It took some time for them to clear.

“Yeah, I guess so. Yeah,” he finally answered and his voice was calm. “Unless you can come up with a better way. I mean, I can’t let him die knowing I can do something about it.”

If Hermione guessed at his train of thoughts, she didn’t show it. “I’ll keep looking,” she said in a determined tone. “I can ask a friend at Ilvermorny to check the library there, though they are pretty advanced with their numerization process — reminds me I have to push the funding for our Worldwide Wizarding Web initiative again — and I’ll also drop a line to the curator of the Palatium’s museum. In the meantime, I’ll have a brief about the Faultless Bond drawn up by my intern and sent to you. Don’t worry, I’ll tell him it’s work-related research.”

Harry nodded and stood straight, tossing the disappointing yellow binder on his desk. He looked at his plastic Casio. “Right then, nearly lunch. I’d better jump back to see if he has what he needs. Do you think Ron got everything from the list?”

“Yes, he left before the shop’s opening time this morning. I expect he’d have the lot back at your house already. Do you want me to come with you?”

Harry felt a wave of affection. His brown-eyed friend was wearing her plum-colored robes, with the embroidered silver W, which meant that the full Wizengamot was in session. But she was still ready to drop everything to help him. 

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he answered, “he wasn’t happy about Ron knowing. I mean, I don’t care, but the guy’s difficult enough as it is. I’d prefer not to feed fuel into the reproaches fire. Besides, you’re busy. And I’d rather have you looking for another solution.”

“Absolutely.” Hermione stood up too, but she put her hand on Harry’s forearm, stopping him in his movement toward the fireplace.

“Harry?” she asked.

“Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

“Me?” Harry asked back, caught off-guard by the question; his thoughts had returned to brooding over Snape's reapperance. “I think so. A bit shell-shocked still, I guess — what, with everything. But yes, I’m fine.”

Hermione, who was still looking at him questioningly, didn’t seem convinced, but she didn’t insist either. She rearranged a strand of stray hair with her free hand. 

“Can I ask you something?” she enquired.

“Sure, of course.”

Hermione paused before speaking carefully. 

“If, and only if, you go through with it. Doesn’t it ... bother you that he’s a man? I mean… You know?”

“... Er, that. I haven’t thought about it, really. But it’s as Ron said, I guess. It’s just the once, anyway.”

“Maybe you should think this through a little more,” replied Hermione, unconvinced. “He will be bonded to you, you know. Even if it doesn’t have direct consequences for you.”

Slightly annoyed by Hermione’s stern tone that reminded him of being scolded by Minerva McGonagall, his former transfiguration teacher, Harry answered firmly, “I don’t think so, no. As I’ve said, if we don’t find another way, I can’t just let him die. I just can’t. I saw his memories, he wasn’t — isn’t a bad man. Just freaking irritating.”

Harry paused and glanced at the quiet hills outside his charmed windows. “Besides, it’s his idea, so I guess he’s fine with it. And that’s good enough for me. Actually, I’m kinda surprised he asked at all,” he commented, hearing the perplexity in his own voice.

Hermione didn’t reply immediately. She worried again at her bottom lips, as if pondering whether she should speak. She directed her gaze to the large Remembrall on top of Harry’s filing cabinet.

“… I dunno. I think… I think it makes sense,” she finally said. 

“What do you mean?” asked Harry.

“… I mean… I mean, he did take the Dark Mark. So, I suppose those kind of ties aren’t so shocking to him.”

“I’m not going to be his ‘Lord’, Hermione. Not his, and not anyone’s. That’s not why I’m doing it,” replied Harry, a little hotly.

“No. No, Harry, I know,” Hermione hastily reassured. “The Bond doesn’t work the same as the Mark, anyway. What I mean is that I think, in some way, Snape’s… used to being used. And compelled by magical contracts. So it’s not as much of a stretch for him to seek the Bond. On top of it being the only viable solution he can see to avoid dying, that is. He may not even think it’s that big of a deal.”

A furrow creased between Hermione’s brows as she peered into Harry’s eyes intently. “But you should know better,” she continued intently, “Magical obligations often manifest themselves in unexpected ways. I mean, what if a situation comes up where he has to do something terrible to protect you, Harry? What if it’s Albus, or Lily’s life, against your? If there is a potion in Snape’s possession that can cure James and you, but only one dose left, he’d choose to give it to you because it’d mean he’d get to live longer. Would you want that? So, yeah, maybe you should think about it a little more.”

Then, her brows unknotting, she softened her voice before adding, “You’ve done, and you still do, enough, Harry. You owe nothing to anyone. Especially because he could have asked somebody else.”

Harry recognized the fierce mother as well as the fierce friend and, not for the first time in his life, he wondered, in an abstract sort of way, what made Hermione and him not happen.

The ease with which he could put himself in her shoes, and choose Ron over himself, all day all the way, answered the question as it had before. His red-haired best friend was whole in a way that Harry had envied on many occasions.

“He asked me because I’m his best shot, or he wouldn’t have, I think,” Harry answered calmly. Hermione had expressed some of his own worries, and he found himself steadied by it; answers to questions he had pondered himself came to him. “The curse at his neck is the kind we’re trying to ban,” he continued, “I haven’t seen something like that since… since the war. And that hypothetical potion you talk about; it wouldn’t exist if I let Snape die. So I don’t think it makes a difference.”

He glanced out his windows again. “Besides, it just wouldn’t feel right. Letting him die, I mean. So, unless we can come up with a better way, I’m going to do it. As I’ve said, he isn’t a bad man. The opposite.”

Hermione didn’t reply for a long time. When she finally did, it was with a smile and a fond, though perhaps a little sad, look in her eyes.

“You’re a good man too, Harry,” said she.

It was therefore left undiscussed that Snape already had dedicated a good chunk of his life to protect him. To an extent, more ardently so than Dumbledore even, while executing a number of things Harry would qualify as terrible in doing so, and while always choosing to sacrifice himself — making what he had gathered of the Faultless Bond almost redundant in his opinion.

After Hermione released him from her hug, which made him feel better than he had all morning, Harry floo’d back home just in time to catch Ron leaving.

“Yullo there, mate. I owe you one at the pub, Kreacher’s got pasties.”

“Oh Ron, you’re here. Did you get everything for Snape?”

“Yup, everything passed inspection too. With flying colors.”

“Kreacher doesn’t know about that, Mr. Weasley. Mr. Snape said the fireseeds were dry, but that they’d do.”

“Yeah, well, where do you expect me to find fresh ones this time of the year? I’ll have you know those came out of our shop’s special reserve.”

“So, you’ve seen him? Is he alright?” asked Harry.

“How would I know? Kreacher is the official Snape emissary here,” answered Ron.

“About that, Master Potter” interjected Kreacher, “Mr. Snape wishes me to inform you he won’t be seeing anyone as he has begun the purification rite, so Master Potter shouldn’t be bothering him.”

“... Hear that, mate? Sounds like you’re locked out of your own bedroom.”

“What purification rite?” asked Harry, frowning.

“Mr. Snape has also asked Kreacher to tell Master Potter that if he didn’t know what it meant, then Master Potter should ask his much smarter, female friend about it.”

The house-elf paused before adding helpfully, “That would be Mrs. Granger-Weasley, Kreacher thinks.”

“... Alrighty. I’ll be leaving you two lovebirds to it then. Gotta go back to the shop. And if Master Potter needs anything else, then Master Potter should ask his much more handsome, male friend about it,” Ron said as he made for the exit with a lopsided grin on his face, the sound of his footsteps up the stairs echoing in the basement kitchen. 

Cross at that last jab from Ron, who was enjoying the freak show way too much for his taste, Harry let himself envision some great spider splatting his best friend’s windshield while he drove his flying Caterham 21 back to Diagon Alley. 

“So, what is he doing up there, exactly?” Harry asked Kreacher, after he heard the front door thump shut.

“Mr. Snape? Kreacher won’t snoop and tell, but Mr. Snape was brewing something in Master Sirius’ cauldron when Kreacher brought him lunch.”

“In my bedroom?”

“Yes. But Master Potter shouldn’t worry. The windows were open, and Kreacher can tell Mr. Snape is a very tidy guest. He had the carpets tucked away, and the nightstand covered with a leather apron when he was cutting bugs on it.”

“Well, since the carpets were tucked away, I see no problem at all,” replied Harry.

The sarcasm flew right over the old house-elf, so Harry chalked up Kreacher as a lost cause. He grabbed a still-warm pasty, and made for the service stairs, climbing up in quick, bouncing steps as he chewed into the beef-and-veggie delicacy.

A faint aroma of sulphur was already itching his nose by the second floor; but the acrid, rotten-eggs-like stink was so overwhelming when he reached the fourth, and final landing before the attic, that Harry almost threw up his last bite of beef filling. The stench was so thick Harry felt physically assaulted by it. With his eyes watering, he had to stop to swallow his mouthful down, with one hand leaning on his knee, and the other trying to cover his nose with his sleeve. 

He had successfully forced the pasty down and past his pharynx already, and was only slightly gagging still before he remembered he was a wizard and cast a bubble-head charm on himself. As his head was magically encased, he stood for several seconds, breathing in the inodorous air with intense relief .

Then, fully intent on knocking it down, he reached the shut door to his own bedroom in three strides. He was only prevented from doing so, with a clenched fist suspended in mid-air, by the great swathe of silvery light that rushed through him, leaving a ticklish sensation in its wake.

Snape’s doe patronus cantered beautifully on herself by the landing’s window, before speaking in Snape’s acerbic voice, rather ruining the effect.

“Don’t even think about it if you do not wish for my cadaver to haunt these halls. And do instruct yourself before you cause me more harm.”

The magicked air pocket around his head reverberated the string of swearing that came out of Harry’s mouth. 

For good measure, he cast his own patronus to intimidate Snape’s doe away, but his stag only cavorted gallantly around its female counterpart, the traitor.

Back at the Ministry, he was ten minutes deep into a scheduled staff meeting when he realized he still had the bubble-head charm on. His assistant who was seated closest to him discreetly pinched her nose the whole hour through.

When the workload of the day was cleared at last, Harry had half a mind to text Anna, who hadn’t replied since his last message, to see if they could meet, just to get out of the house that had Snape — and who knows what new level of horror the guy had managed — in it. But then, an envelope containing a neatly typed document was brought to him by his assistant. It had Hermione’s handwritten note attached: _Here’s what we discussed. I’ve added my remarks._

The brief on the Faultless Bond stashed in the inner pocket of his cloak, Harry grabbed his broom and a dinner pack from the Ministry’s lunchroom and, taking the visitor’s exit in the Atrium, he apparated to a quiet field near now Ginny’s house. 

From the slight hill, he could make out in the distance the limestone three storeys with its pretty green and blue painted roof. The lights were on in the westmost windows of the ground floor, and Harry imagined Ginny slow-dancing in the kitchen with her new beau, like they had done when they first moved in. 

He illuminated his wand against the dimming dusk and propped himself on a half-torn down fence to read the brief. When he was done, he flew until his head was empty and clear.

It was nearing midnight when Harry returned to Grimmauld Place. He was relieved to find the building still standing. It was also silent and free of noxious odours. 

Casting a Cat’s Steps charm on his feet, he quietly made his way to the fourth floor for the second time of the day. 

His bedroom door had been locked with a ward made of hexes cunningly interwoven together. They were so densely spelled, it reminded Harry of the Half-Blood Prince’s narrow and packed handwriting on the potions textbook he had so cherished.

Breaking Snape’s charm would have been more effort than to gain entrance by blasting through the walls around the door. Harry kinda did the latter.

Hermione’s brief explained that Snape, as a Faultless Bond seeker, was to shade his eyes from the sight of fellow humans for at least 24 hours while he performed the various observances of the Purification Rite. But it didn’t say that fellow humans couldn’t lay their eyes on Snape.

Wrapped in his Invisibility Cloak, Harry cautiously climbed down from the trapdoor that opened from the attic, into the walked-in dressing next to his bedroom. The door separating the two had been removed during the renovation, so he was free to pad his way into the sleeping area, which was thankfully fresh smelling and unencumbered by potions instruments.

Just as the night before, Snape had pushed most of the bedcovers down to the floor, but tonight the man had forgone a nightshirt, and angular, bare shoulders protruded from under the bedspread.

Also like the night before, Snape slept with the curtains undrawn

The cold light of the moon made the bruise at his neck stand out as a great, dark mass that ate at inflamed skin on throat and collarbones — barely distinguishable from the stray strands of Snape’s hair. 

An empty flask sat on the nightstand alongside a small dish of fine, white powder that Harry knew from Hermione’s brief was natron with which the man would have cleansed himself with.

Forgetting he had charmed his steps, Harry tiptoed closer to the bed. 

Snape slept on his side with one hand under the pillow, no doubt holding his wand.

A nervous tick on his closed eyelids jumped in tempo with bouts of trembling that affected his entire body. At intervals, the man emitted wheezing sounds from hampered breathing. His face was covered in sweat and up close the cursed bruise seemed to throb.

Harry re-cast the only diagnosis spell he knew over the sleeping form: the word “critical” flashed red under his cloak. No instructions for medical care accompanied it. 

Biting his lips in hesitation, Harry finally muttered the same intricate conjuration he had the night before, while drawing complex arabesques over Snape with the tip of his wand. After the long incantation was finished, he wordlessly summoned a small paper card on which he spelled three words using the darkness of the night itself as ink:

> _Tomorrow night. Ok?_

With the short note deposited on Snape’s pillow, Harry left the room by the same way he came.

Back in James’ room, Harry silently stared at his eldest son’s various posters of juvenile aspirations and, musing that his children may not have been born if not for Snape, he banished his last doubts and slept soundly.

When he woke up the next morning, Snape’s doe was by his bed.

The graceful creature stood immobile and looked at Harry for a long time, its spectral form bathed in the soft and warm light of dawn. 

Then, it inclined its delicate head once, before dissipating.

The ensuing day at work was a blur. Hermione, who had taken a trip to Hogwarts’ Restricted Section just in case, had found nothing new. Ron came by Harry’s office at noon to sit with them. He gave Harry a fraternal sort of pat on the shoulders when he left.

At midnight sharp, Harry was in front of the door to his bedroom. It opened without resistance.

Snape was in bed, his head propped up against several pillows, his eyes closed and shoulders bare under a single cotton sheet. 

Whatever remedy the man must have taken seemed to work for now, as Snape wasn’t shaking in the way Harry saw him do the night before. 

Harry, feeling self-conscious about his strange garb, advanced bare-footed on the thick carpet until his knees bumped against the bed frame. His heart was drumming in his throat.

As he looked at Snape’s profile, which was illuminated against the darkness by moonlight and a single candle, and the immobility of which was barely disturbed by the shifts of breath, Harry felt as if under a spell; mysterious and eerie and momentous. The mystic atmosphere was enhanced by the scent of burning myrrh.

He didn’t know if he should speak, not daring to break the peaceful silence, and felt his own nakedness under the linen _chiton_ he had acquired.

Snape, however, stole the hesitation out of him.

Slowly retracting his mobile eyelids to open dark eyes, he turned his face to Harry and gave him an once over.

“Overkill, don’t you think?”

Harry felt himself flush crimson. 

Forcing his gestures to be slow, he took his glasses off to put them on the nightstand alongside his wand, and soldiered through the embarrassment by speaking in a soft but clear voice, the steadiness of which he did not feel. 

Shrugging deliberately, he said, “I thought you may want to stack all the odds in your favor. I’ve read up. You’re not even sure it’s going to work. Here. For you.” 

From his left hand Harry produced a slim wreath, woven out of green leaves and ribbons, twin to the one he wore on his head, and held it out to Snape.

Snape wrinkled his nose.

“These are not nuptials, Potter.”

“I know. It’s olive leaves, not flowers. Told you I read up.”

Snape seemed to consider, before shrugging in turn.

“Be my guest” spoken in a hushed tone — almost a whisper — like he had never heard from the man before.

Harry gave a small smile he hoped was friendly and gingerly sat down sideways on the edge of the bed. Snape lifted his shoulders and head to let Harry crown him with the wreath.

“Well, we both look like idiots now,” he commented after the leafed band was secured on top of his hair by trailing ribbons.

Harry heard himself make a kind of half chuckle-half squeak. Snape can be funny, he thought, giddy from the tension.

But Snape wasn’t laughing at all. His eyes were serious and intent, looking up at Harry. And Harry realized Snape was nervous too.

“So, um, how do you want to do this?” he asked cautiously. They were both whispering now.

“I thought you may provide the expertise.”

If there was sarcasm in Snape’s reply, Harry chose to ignore it. Feeling his face redden again, he glanced at the small jar of translucent substance sitting on the nightstand that Snape had prepared for obvious purposes.

“I’ve done this. But, not with another man. I thought you may want to know,” he said solemnly.

Snape merely rolled his dark eyes. “I haven’t done _this,_ or anything else, with anyone. Are we quite done with the chit-chat?” Snape’s voice was still soft, cushioning the words.

Harry entertained himself with some saucy replies along the line of “Aren’t we eager?” but quickly squashed the idea. Instead, seeing no point in delaying what had to be done, he carefully planted his hands on each side of Snape’s face and, closing his eyes, dove in for a kiss.

Only to be stopped dead in his track by something pointy and hard digging viciously into his ear.

“ _What do you think you are doing?_ ” a low, dangerous hiss, all softness gone, and all harness returned. 

Snape, who had produced his wand, was jabbing it thanklessly at Harry while glaring murder with his eyes, as if some monumental crime had been committed. The man’s thin lips were retracted over uneven teeth that looked really yellow in proximity.

Harry scrunched up his face. 

“I’m so sorry. I really am. And here I thought you wanted this. Maybe I was wrong. I must have gotten all the wrong signals from _you asking me to —_ ”

“Don’t play games, Potter!”

“I’m not!”

“Then why are you provoking me with… with things reserved for lovers!”

“ _What_?”

“Do not take me for an imbecile! The Bond does not require that we do _that_!”

Straightening himself, Harry batted Snape’s wand away from him. “It’s a kiss. Just a kiss. You can say it. It’s not a dirty word. It’s just… just to get into the mood, you know.”

“It’s absolutely unnecessary.”

“Oh yeah, and you would know, wouldn’t you.”

“Potter! Again, _I am not_ an imbecile. You do not need _that_ to ‘get into the mood’, as you put it!”

Harry crossed his arms over his chest as he adjusted his position to face Snape

“So what am I supposed to do, then? Wank until I’m hard enough and stick it in? Charming, but I don’t think that would meet the ‘ _sealed by pleasure exchanged’_ requirement. Not for me, sorry.”

“It’s ‘ _sealed by seed spilt in faultless flesh put forth_ ’, —”

“Oh god, don’t make it worse. I had a pretty good run of denial going on here.”

“— and at no point are you required to sully my mouth with —”

“ _Sully_? _Your mouth_? Got a pretty high opinion of yourself, haven’t you? And here I thought you were just being shy. Guess not.”

“ — your inept attempt at idyllics.”

“Idyllics? That’s a big word. But not as big as your head, I think.”

“Are we back to childish insults?”

“Oh, again, I’m so sorry, is that _sullying_ you too?”

Snape didn’t respond, and they glared at each other until Harry caved.

“Look, Sn - Look, I’m sorry, alright. If you’d just —”

“Use the lubricant I have prepared. It contains an aphrodisiac which will move you into a state of appropriate arousal.” 

“Wow. Thanks for the vote of confidence, I guess.”

“Potter.”

“... Right.”

Whatever sense of gravitas Harry had deluded himself with earlier, he was no longer feeling — it had dissolved into thin air just like the two minutes of relative harmony they had kept. The smoke from the burning myrrh irritated his nostrils and made him want to sneeze.

Summoning his mental mantra to remind himself that this was to save Snape’s life, Harry fished around to grab the jar of lubricant. 

Uncorking it, he dipped two fingers inside, gathering some of the gel-like, bluish substance. It was cold, and tingled his skin on contact, but warmed up as he rubbed his fingers together. It also made him feel light-headed from just breathing in a whiff of the heavy, musky scent. 

Harry calmly replaced the lid back on the jar and thoroughly wiped his fingers on the bedsheets.

“So, Snape. You realize I work in law enforcement, don’t you?”

“What’s wrong now, Potter?”

“Well, let me see. _That’s methamphetamine you tried to make me rub my dick in.”_

Snape had the gall to sneer. “So, what of it? Spare me the fastidious uptightness Potter, you are not one to speak when it comes to rules breaking. And, I wouldn’t expect you to know that, if not ingested, methyl derivatives are perfectly harmless applied locally. Only their vaporised form from low heat combustion may produce mild psychotropic effects.”

“Oh yeah? First, being out of bed after curfew isn’t lawbreaking, you prick. Second, are you trying to tell me that a potions expert wouldn’t know of ways to suspend vapors in liquids to be released on contact? _The way we all learned to do in fourth year brewing the Strengthening Solution in your own class_? Who’s taking who for an imbecile now?”

“I see. How typically graceful of you to remind me in _our present circumstances_ that I taught you when you were still a spotted little squirt. Not that my efforts ever made an impression on you back then.”

“Well, I guess the foot-long essay you gave me for screwing up that one did the trick, didn’t it?”

“Ah yes, recriminations about extra homework assigned three decades ago whilst I am at death’s d—”

“Don’t change the subject! _For fuck’s sake_ , what was the plan here, Snape? And _mild_? That stuff could knock out a troll! Did you want us both so hyped and out of it, we wouldn’t know what we’re doing? Is that it? Because that’s a great idea if you wanted both of us to get hurt. Not to m—”

“Of course not. I will need to perform a highly complex enchantment afterward. I have ingested an antidote hours ago to stay in control during the entire process.” 

Harry felt truly taken aback by that. Betrayed, almost.

“So that was the plan? To have me... have me rut like an animal without my being conscious of it?” 

“Are you done with the melodrama? Methamphetamine is certainly not potent enough to —”

“ _I could have hurt you!_ ”

“Who’s the one with the extravagantly high opinion of themselves now?” said Snape, with a nasty glance down Harry’s anatomy. 

Something in Harry’s brain snapped then. He didn’t know if it was the dismissiveness in the last insult — toward him and toward Snape himself, or the accumulated three days of repressed frustration while trying to play nice and keeping it together and act not even shocked that Snape was alive after all, or the fact that the impossible man who had impossibly resuscitated in front of him was on the verge of dying again, wearing at his throat that cursed bruise inflicted by Voldemort’s will which even now positively pulsated with a malignance so repugnant it made Harry’s stomach knot. It was just getting to him. All of it. 

“On your stomach.” he ordered briskly.

Snape eyed him warily at the brusque change in his composure.

“I said turn around on your stomach.” Harry repeated. “Do it or I’m out of here.” he added as Snape still didn’t move. Harry furiously pulled at the ridiculous _chiton_ he wore. 

The rectangular piece of linen merely held by clasps at his shoulders and a length of string at his waist readily came apart. Harry threw the whole thing away, the small metal clips clinking onto the floor somewhere in the darkness. 

He was naked in front of Snape, and he didn’t even care. 

“Potter, I will have you know that this is not an invitation for your mucked brain to enact some sort of twisted revenge fanta —”

“TURN AROUND AND LIE ON YOUR STOMACH SO I DON’T HAVE TO TALK TO YOU OR LOOK AT YOU WHILE I SAVE YOUR SORRY HIDE!”

“...”

“...”

“Fine. But remember that I invented a selection of extremely painful hexes I will not shy from administering to your genitals, even if they are the last thing I spell with my dying breath.”

“Whatever.”

Snape stubbornly glowered at Harry for several more seconds, no doubt to make his point. Before, without another word, he propped himself up on his elbow and flipped onto his front, his face turned sideways on the pillow and away from Harry.

Harry just sat on the bed for a while, focusing on counting to ten to calm himself down. 

When he felt like he wasn’t going to make Snape spontaneously sprout extra appendages, and deciding that there was no helping his trepidations, Harry pulled at the bed sheet still covering Snape; exposing the man’s entire body in one swift movement. 

Snape visibly tensed up but said nothing. Harry took in the naked, prone form.

It was... not horrible. 

Harry didn’t know what he had expected, or if he had expected anything at all — although it was definitely one of those curveballs of existence that he would find himself in a position to confirm that Snape was not, in fact, a bat, in the first place — but Snape’s body was… just a body. 

The man was less muscular than Harry, but his limbs were reasonably wiry, in an elongated, sinewy sort of way. Whatever kind of life he had led all these years, Snape had obviously regularly exposed himself to a lot of sun, judging by the uniform tan that spanned even his only somewhat bony — like the rest of him — backside. The faint imprints of rope Harry had spotted on the first night had faded to be unnoticeable, and, with the cursed bruise hidden from Harry’s sight, Snape was mostly unmarked. Not less so anyway than Harry himself, who too had collected a series of minor scars from his time as a field Auror. 

Harry also thought that for someone nearing sixty, and the amount of exposure to UV he must have gotten to be this tan, Snape wasn’t even that wrinkly. Actually, under moon and candlelight, Snape’s lain and bare body looked… vulnerable.

That, or he was trying really hard to deluded himself again. Anyway.

And the waist was narrow, and the legs were long. And Harry could get behind those. 

It also helped a lot that parts of Snape’s anatomy Harry wasn’t used to seeing in bed weren’t visible to him at the moment. 

Harry let go of the breath he had been holding and cautiously placed his hand on the middle of Snape’s back. He felt the muscles under his palm contract briefly, before they unwound again.

Snape’s skin was cold. And Harry realized he hadn’t specified a time when he left his note the night before. So Snape could have been waiting for a couple of hours already before Harry came to him; covered only with the cotton sheet.

On impulse, Harry did a reasonable thing to do to warm up another, which was to cover Snape’s body with his own. 

Snape didn’t comment when Harry climbed into the bed to hover over him, so Harry felt free to cradle his face in the nook of Snape’s shoulder, with Snape still facing away from him. He eased himself down to press himself flush against the other man.

Harry felt Snape shiver, but nothing more.

With most of his weight still carefully distributed to his forearms, on each side of Snape, and to his knees between Snape’s legs, Harry simply nested there for a moment, curled atop and around Snape’s naked body.

He let himself breathe in the other man’s scent whilst he appreciated the contact of skin against skin.

Snape didn’t smell of pineapple or campfire anymore, but of Harry’s own, completely unobjectionable herbal soap.

And Snape’s body warming up against his own was… companionable.

Harry nudged his nose deeper into Snape’s hair and closed his eyes. And, as Snape still didn’t object when he eased himself down some more to press them closer, Harry decided to try a slow rocking motion.

Still silent, Snape didn’t show any sign of alarm as he let himself be carried by Harry’s swaying.

After a moment of the gentle motion, with the other man’s skin now warm against his own, Harry thought that, yeah, he could do this.

“Tell me if I cause you any discomfort, ok?” Harry whispered into the hair on the back of Snape’s head. “I… I really don’t want to hurt you.”

Snape didn’t respond, so Harry tried again; still whispering he raised his head over Snape’s profile.

“Sn — Severus? Are you o — ?”

“Potter, I thought we agreed on not talking to, and not looking at each other,” Snape cut him off, not quite snapping but audibly irritated. 

Harry felt himself flush at that. Though he was relieved to hear the other man respond. He hid his face in the cranny of Snape’s shoulder again.

“I didn’t mean… I just meant no arguing. But you have to tell me if something’s wrong alright? I don’t want... I don’t want you to have a horrible memory of this. And I’m not going to... avenge myself or anything, because I don’t hate you. I don’t.” 

Harry knew he was starting to ramble, but he couldn’t stop himself. It was also definitely easier to talk conciliatingly without Snape glaring him down in a way that made Harry want to throttle the man. 

“And… and all that awful stuff you used to say to me when I was a kid, I understand it. I do. I know it’s because my father was horrible to you. I want you to know that I thought he really was. Horrible to you, I mean. That, and because you needed Voldemort to think you were on his side. And I also understand that Dumbledore asked you to kill him, even though you didn’t want to, and I think that was very brave of you to have carried out his wish. You did save us all, you know. I couldn’t have done it — defeating Voldemort I mean — if it weren’t for everything that you did. And… And... I named my second son after you, you know? I mean, I just wanted you to know that I don’t hate you. Not really. Not at all… Are you ok?” Harry trailed off as he heard Snape’s groan. It was a gruff and long-drawn, plaintive sound that vibrated through them both. 

“ _Potter_. _What_ could _possibly_ make you think that symposium on past traumatic history and your underage child would be conducive to ‘getting into the mood’ as you’ve put it? _At all_? I _do not_ find myself surprised you are a divorced man.”

“... Oh,” was all Harry could reply, the jab into the still tender spot of his failed marriage overtaken by the strange notion that Snape had been trying to get randy.

Snape must have sensed the panic that seized Harry then: as the realization that he was going to have sex with Severus Snape, _numero uno_ bane of his existence during his school years short of dark-lords, finally dawned upon him, Harry froze, utterly tetanized while still pressed flush against Snape’s body with his chin digging into Snape’s shoulder and his flaccid prick squashed against Snape’s buttocks, locking them both clumsily into place — because the older man, after a defeated sort of sigh, said in a softer tone, “Don’t overthink it, Potter.”

And, as Harry remained petrified, “Just… Just consider this another task of the Triwizard Tournament. You were... good with that sort of thing,” Snape added awkwardly; but not without letting Harry hear the muttered “And the virgin is supposedly I.”

Harry felt himself flush again at both the jab and what he identified as an attempt at encouragement.

He was actually reassured Snape wasn’t so completely horrified by the situation that he had tried complimenting him at all. Though the reminder of the competition he was forcefully thrown in while a child, and which led to his first experience of consciously witnessing death was decidedly maladroit.

Snape, Harry decided, and that in spite of the sardonic frills the man liked to deck himself with, was really quite an oaf. Not much better at these things than Harry himself. It levelled the playing field, which bolstered Harry further.

“Alright then,” Harry said, finally relaxing. “As long we are clear this needn’t be painful for you, and you will tell me if —”

“Potter, I get it. You are a noble and chivalrous Gryffindor in whose hands my maidenhood will be treated with utmost gallantry. Now, GET A MOVE ON. I _do not_ have all the time in the world.”

Snape’s peeved order shifted his ribcage beneath Harry’s chest, bumping into Harry’s chin.

“Right. You will tell me though?” Harry insisted.

“...”

“...”

“Yes. Satisfied?”

“Yeah.” Harry said, smiling into Snape’s hair, bemused for some reason. 

Casting his worries away, he breathed in the herbal scent from Snape’s hair again and, after closing his eyes, he resumed the companionable rocking of their bodies.

The skin pressed against his own was soft, and the simple contact of light friction felt good. It also came to the surface of Harry’s mind that he was in effect hugging Snape. And that idea felt good somehow, so he let himself be carried away by the smoothness of the comforting touch. Soon, he could feel an inkling of mechanical interest in his groin, and was relieved it was surely going to be possible without doping himself up to the eyeballs. 

He lifted up a bit and ran a hand along the long expanse of Snape’s back. Snape didn’t object, so he explored some more with gentle pressure, kneading into taunt muscles in spots.

Snape definitely seemed to like that, leaning into the heavier compressions that caught kinks. 

Lifting himself up completely and sitting back on his heels between Snape’s parted legs, Harry summoned from his bathroom the balm he used after weary days or rough Quidditch, and started genuinely kneading the oily substance with both hands into the other man’s skin, making his way from Snape’s shoulders downward. 

Snape’s sighs of contentment at his ministrations surprised Harry. The man was liberal with vocalisations, not censoring himself at all when Harry hit some obviously sensitive spots. The throatier moans didn’t leave Harry’s cock completely indifferent, which was further relief. 

Minding the fact that Snape must be under the effect of some potions that prevented him from shaking the way Harry had witnessed before, Harry didn’t dawdle too long before reaching Snape’s buttocks. The now steady stream of appreciative noises wasn’t interrupted until Harry tried running a finger along the shadowed cleft.

“Don’t you dare put camphor inside me. Use — ungh — proper lubrication” Snape attempted to snarl. The barb didn’t have any bite, half muffled into the pillow and interjected by a shudder as it was.

Harry repressed a snicker, not wanting to unsettle the hard won peace. Besides, his balls contracting at the words “inside me” uttered in that usually scornful voice was interesting.

Wordlessly and wandlessly, he summoned a tube that flew out of his nightstand’s drawer. He coated his nascent erection before warming more of it between his fingers.

Snape noticeably tensed up when he pressed his thumb against the tiny pucker hidden between the flesh of his buttocks, but as Harry simply lay his finger there, gliding the gel lubricant around while he stroked the man’s long legs with his other hand, Snape accustomed himself to the touch.

When Harry switched digits and pushed his index finger more insistingly against him, Snape stilled completely; clearly doing some sort of controlled breathing to relax himself. 

Harry’s slicked index slid inside Snape with little resistance, and Harry felt his own cock jump in sympathy with the sensation of the tensile pressure closing around his digit. 

His mouth dry, Harry bit his lips as he tested the resistance of the narrow channel some more. Snape had gone very quiet, but judging by the tentative shifts that accompanied some of Harry’s movements, it wasn’t completely because of discomfort. It reminded Harry of the front-page photo in which Snape hadn’t seemed to be totally averse to the touch of another man. Perhaps Snape had wanted to try this all his life, but had been stuck with the Covenant? Harry decided it couldn’t hurt to delude himself a bit with that idea, and determined himself to make it as good for Snape as he possibly could. 

When he carefully fit a third finger inside, and as he heard Snape’s sharp intake of breath, while feeling the taunt ring of muscle contract around his digits, he palmed his own cock with his other hand. He couldn’t help himself thinking that his engorged penis would be inside his former teacher who used to give him detentions, and that it would be the first time Snape would experience that; that the first time Snape would be fucked was to be by him, a student he used to hate for reasons beyond reason. The thought was weird and terrifying, with layers of perversity the scope of which was too large to unravel. It also made his balls contract, and his mouth water. 

Then there was also simple curiosity. Harry already knew he liked the raunchier coupling of anal sex on occasions. But what would it feel like with another man? Would it be different?

Suspended between apprehension and anticipation, he fingered Snape some more, going deeper, feeling the silky texture of the hot passage, until he heard Snape make small whiny sounds and lean into his touch. 

When he pulled his fingers out, the sight of the wrinkly, wet rim tightening up again definitively made his cock strain; the urgency he felt no doubt aided by his missed rendez-vous with Anna.

Harry coated himself with more lube, before motioning for Snape to lift his hips. The man let himself be guided so that Harry could place pillows under his stomach. With Snape’s arse propped up, Harry covered the other man’s body once more and, encouraged by the glimpse he caught of Snape’s equal arousal during the maneuver, Harry pressed his crotch against Snape’s cleft. He felt Snape’s full body shiver.

“Is that ok?” he murmured into Snape’s ear.

“... No talking” was the muffled reply.

Harry wanted to kiss the back of Snape’s head in a gesture of comfort, but since Snape seemed so averse to the act, he opted for resting his forehead at the nape of Snape’s neck, while he ground himself against the presented buttock, trailing the length of his cock along the heated furrow between glutes. To his surprise, he felt Snape press back against him. He was really hard now, and he suppressed a groan when his glans skid past Snape’s anus. 

Shifting the weight of his upper body onto his forearm beside Snape’s shoulder, he reached down with one hand to line himself up. He let Snape feel the tip of his prick against his hot pucker, Snape stilling at the touch, before he carefully pressed downward.

The sound Snape produced when Harry’s cock breached into him made Harry want to push all the way in. It was a half-needy, half-pained cry that pulled at Harry’s balls like a tangible string, sending electricity along his spine, to his nipples, to his brain. Harry shut his eyes tightly and bit down on his tongue in the effort to stay still, the tip of his cock barely inside, as the man beneath him adjusted to his girth. Snape’s hole was gripping the most sensitive part of his prick so sweetly it made him tremble.

No longer able to resist it, Harry peppered comforting kisses on the skin in between Snape’s shoulders, as the sound of Snape’s laboured breath echoed in the room.

After a while, Harry felt the pressure around his cock-head receded slightly and the tremors in Snape’s legs calm. Snape tentatively moved beneath Harry, and Harry had to bite down on his tongue again.

He picked up the pattern of Snape’s motion and gyrated his hips without going deeper, following Snape’s lead. They rocked like this for a long moment, before he felt Snape really relax around him and heard Snape sigh. 

Harry, still keeping in pace with their slow gyration, tentatively pushed in further. Snape groaned and tensed up again, but relaxed faster this time.

Inch by agonizing inch, Harry progressively nudged his cock within Snape; wooing the elastic, pulsating hole to part for him and take more with deliberate restraint. By the time he was fully sheathed, he was covered in sweat, and both of them were breathing heavily.

Harry rested his forehead against the man beneath him as he panted from the effort. His heart was drumming like he had run a marathon, the sound of pumping blood was loud in his ears, and his tightly encased cock was burning up from the need to move.

The slight backward press of Snape’s ass against him was all the invitation he needed. He felt himself pull out and push back in; Snape’s gasp making his ass clench in sympathy. He tried to keep his movements slow and shallow, but the silky, hot drag along his length was torture, and the sounds Snape kept making didn’t help. Soon he was fucking Snape in long, full thrusts, leaving only the tip of his cock inside, the sheer physicality of the carnal friction and the scent of myrrh making him dizzy. Snape was panting and groaning in tempo to every penetration, and it was all Harry could do to not pound in hard just to see if he could make the man cry out louder. 

At some point Harry hit an angle that made Snape moan excruciatingly. Snape reached back with his hand and grabbed at Harry’s arse-cheek to press him in close; Harry who had already lost track of his mental recitation from the International Convention to Safe and Clean Disposal of Obscure Objects, 1964 Edition, Appendix IV, 26c - On the Subject of Charmed Combs, tried to regain some control and maintain the position. That way, he shoved his hips faster and harder, fucking Snape in earnest, the way the man obviously wanted it — each of Snape’s ravaged moans sending shivers to his entire body and bringing him closer to the edge. He wanted to bite the man who was making such wanton sounds. He chewed his own lips instead. Snape’s slippery hole was alleluia tight around his cock, and furnace hot; milking him like some bespoke device designed for that use.

Praying to any god who would listen that he would make Snape come before him, he reached around and fumbled blindly. When he closed his hand around Snape’s throbbing, sticky shaft, the alien weight of the other man’s hot arousal only adding to his own, he pulled roughly. 

Snape came in abrupt and protracted, warm spurts that wetted Harry’s hand, a bellow muffled into the pillow; and the echoing spasms of Snape’s ass around his cock sent Harry spiralling into his own orgasm. Harry slammed in as far as he could go, feverishly spreading Snape’s arse cheeks with clammy hands to plunge in further still. He spilt himself deep within, his mind blanking as he heard himself shout. 

Harry couldn’t have said how long it was before he regained his senses.

He was half collapsed on top of Snape, and the other man was pulling at his hair none too gently to get him off of him.

Harry wobbly pushed himself up and aside, the disengagement of his spent and sensitive prick making both of them shudder.

He flipped over onto his back and settled himself next to Snape, claiming a pillow to prop his head. With his eyes half-open, he observed the other man gingerly seat himself with his back pressed against the headboard.

By wand, the shallow bronze basin in which the myrrh was still smoldering was summoned to levitate in midair nearby. 

Without a glance toward Harry, Snape began adding ingredients, each conjured from the darkness beyond the bed, to the basin in succession; all the while muttered incantations animated his thin lips.

The process went on for at least an hour; the unnatural combustion in the basin flickering red, purple, yellow, blue... filling the air with a strange, ozone-like smell.

At one point Harry felt a ticklish sensation on his head as the half-squashed leaves from the wreaths he brought were magically detached to be included in the pile of transmuting matter. Two strands of dark hair, long and short, were added to the small heap.

He was half dozing off to the humdrum of Snape’s voice and half still chasing his afterglow, when a flash of light illuminated the room as if in full daylight for a split-second.

The ritual was complete and a single glistening, white-coloured pill the size of a cherry tomato sat in the middle of the basin.

Harry watched Snape pick up the perfectly round pill and take it to his mouth; it was chased down with a glass of water.

A white light glowed for a few seconds from within Snape’s throat, before it was gone.

“Is it done?” Harry asked sleepily.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

With an effort equal to disengaging himself from one of Hagrid’s hugs, Harry pushed himself up and into a sitting position.

He first grabbed the half-full glass of water from Snape’s hand, and emptied it under scrutinizing black pupils. After putting the empty glass down on the nightstand, Harry collected his own wand.

With his free hand, he bluntly tugged at Snape’s and laced their fingers together, before charming the ribbons left on both their heads to coil around their entwined hands.

“I, Harry James Potter, vow to protect Severus Snape from harm, to the best of my ability.”

The succinct oath professed, Harry waved his wand and the slim lengths of white satin glowed red before vanishing.

Harry caught the look of utter surprise on Snape’s face. He looked away.

“Fair’s fair,” said he before flopping back down onto the bed.

He hoped that, if it all worked out, the Unbreakable Vow would supersede or at least cancel out Snape’s end of the bargain from the Faultless Bond.

After a scourging charm that made him wince, he summoned the duvet and made himself comfortable with it, leaving enough for Snape if he wanted a share. Snape’s gaze followed the trajectory of his wand when he levitated it back to the nightstand.

The man beside him didn’t move for a long time. 

Harry had been feigning sleep for at least ten minutes before he heard Snape clear his throat.

“The bed is crowded.”

“It’s not. I’m not getting kicked out of my own bed after sex. But you’re welcome to Kreacher’s, I’m sure he’d be delighted.”

“Is this how you treat all your sex partners? Sent them to the servant quarters after the deed?”

“You cooked meth in my house, be glad you’re not sleeping in a holding cell.”

Harry wanted to make sure Snape was under his “magical umbrella” while the Faultless Bond was still working its way, he didn’t say.

It was minutes longer before Harry felt and heard Snape’s movements.

Harry glimpsed through his lashes the man send the bronze basin away and use a much more refined charm to tidy himself up.

Snape then primly settled himself down on his side of the bed, under his own bedspread.

When Snape finally stopped moving, Harry muttered _Nox._

He reached across to rest one arm atop the Snape shaped bundle, and promptly fell asleep.

  
  
  
  



End file.
